M 




\A 



m 







BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE GREAT CATARACTS OF THE ZAMBESI (CALLED MOSIOATUNYA, OR 




OEIA FALL.S), AND OF THE ZIGZAG CHASM BELOW THE FALLS THEOUGH WHICH THE EIVEE ESCAPES. 



NARRATIVE 



OF AN 



EXPEDITION TO THE ZAMBESI 



AND ITS TRIBUTARIES: 



AND OF THE 



DISCOVERY or the LAKES SHIRWA and NYASSA. 



1858—1864. 



By DAVID and CHARLES LIVINGSTONE. 







feTsSV-- ~^5~ 



Witt) iWap mrtj fcllustvatfons. 



N E W Y O R E : 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 









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7c 

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight 
hundred and sixty-five, by 

CHARLES LIVINGSTONE, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



Copyright, 1893, by H. C. Livingstone. 



TO 

THE RIGHT HON. LORD PALMERSTON, 

KG., G.C.B. 

My Lord, 

I beg leave to dedicate this Volume to your Lordship, 
as a tribute justly due to the great Statesman who has ever had 
at heart the amelioration of the African race ; and as a token of 
admiration of the beneficial effects of that policy which he has 
so long, labored to establish on the West Coast of Africa ; and 
which, in improving that region, has most forcibly shown the need 
of some similar system on the opposite side of the Continent. 

DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 



PREFACE. 



It has been my object in this work to give as clear an ac- 
count as I was able of tracts of country previously unex- 
plored, with their river systems, natural productions, and ca- 
pabilities ; and to bring before my countrymen, and all oth- 
ers interested in the cause of humanity, the misery entailed 
by the slave-trade in its inland phases — a subject on which 
I and my companions are the first who have had any oppor- 
tunities of forming a judgment. The eight years spent in 
Africa since my last work was published have not, I fear, im- 
proved my power of writing English ; but I hope that what- 
ever my descriptions want in clearness or literary skill may 
in a measure be compensated by the novelty of the scenes de- 
scribed, and the additional information afforded on that curse 
of Africa, and that shame, even now, in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, of a European nation — the slave-trade. 

I took the "Lady JSTyassa" to Bombay for the express pur- 
pose of selling her, and might, without any difficulty, have 
done so ; but with the thought of parting with her arose, 
more strongly than ever, the feeling of disinclination to aban- 
don the East Coast of Africa to the Portuguese and slave- 
trading, and I determined to run home and consult my friends 
before I allowed the little vessel to pass from my hands. Aft- 
er, therefore, having put two Ajawa lads to school under the 
eminent missionary, the Eev. Dr. Wilson, and having pro- 



vi PREFACE. 

vided satisfactorily for the native crew, I started homeward 
with the three white sailors, and reached London July 20th, 
1864. Mr. and Mrs. Webb, my much-loved friends, wrote to 
Bombay inviting me, in the event of my coming to England, 
to make Newstead Abbey my head-quarters, and on my ar- 
rival renewed their invitation ; and though, when I accepted 
it, I had no intention of remaining so long with my kind- 
hearted, generous friends, I staid with them until April, 1865, 
and under their roof transcribed from my own and my broth- 
er's journal the whole of this present book. It is with heart- 
felt gratitude I would record their unwearied kindness. My 
acquaintance with Mr. Webb began in Africa, where he was 
a daring and successful hunter, and his continued friendship 
is most valuable, because he has seen missionary work, and 
he would not accord his respect and esteem to me had he not 
believed that I, and my brethren also, were to be looked on 
as honest men earnestly trying to do our duty. 

The government have supported the proposal of the Eoyal 
Geographical Society made by my friend Sir Koderick Mur- 
chison, and have united with that body to aid me in another 
attempt to open Africa to civilizing influences, and a valued 
private friend has given a thousand pounds for the same ob- 
ject. I propose to go inland, north of the territory which 
the Portuguese in Europe claim, and endeavor to commence 
that system on the East which has been so eminently success- 
ful on the West Coast — a system combining the repressive 
efforts of H. M. cruisers with lawful trade and Christian Mis- 
sions, the moral and material results of which have been so 
gratifying. I hope to ascend the Eovuma, or some other riv- 
er north of Cape Delgado, and, in addition to my other work, 
shall strive, by passing along the northern end of Lake Ny- 
assa, and round the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, to as- 



POSTSCRIPT TO PREFACE. v jj 

certain the watershed of that part of Africa. In so doing, I 
have no wish to unsettle what with so much toil and danger 
was accomplished by Speke and Grant, but rather to confirm 
their illustrious discoveries. 

I have to acknowledge the obliging readiness of Lord Rus- 
sell in lending me the drawings taken by the artist who was 
in the first instance attached to the Expedition. These sketch- 
es, with photographs by Charles Livingstone and Dr. Kirk, 
have materially assisted in the illustrations. I would also 
very sincerely thank my friends Professor Owen and Mr. Os- 
well for many valuable hints and other aid in the prepara- 
tion of this volume. 

Newstead Abbey, April 16, 1865. 



POSTSCRIPT TO PREFACE. 

The credit which I was fain to award to the Lisbon states- 
men for a sincere desire to put an end to the slave-trade is, I 
regret to find, totally undeserved. They have employed one 
Mons. Lacerda to try to extinguish the facts adduced by me 
before the meeting of the " British Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science" at Bath by a series of papers in the 
Portuguese Official Journal, and their Minister for Foreign 
Affairs has since devoted some of the funds of his govern- 
ment to the translation and circulation of Mons. Lacerda's ar- 
ticles in the form of an English tract. Nothing is more con- 
spicuous in this official document than the extreme ignorance 
displayed of the geography of the country of which they pre- 
tend that they possess not only the knowledge, but also the 
dominion. A vague rumor, cited by some old author, about 
two marshes below Murchison's Cataracts, is considered con- 



yiii POSTSCRIPT TO PREFACE. 

elusive evidence that the ancient inhabitants of Senna, a vil- 
lage on the Zambesi, found no difficulty in navigating the 
Shire to Lake Nyassa up what modern travelers find to be an 
ascent of 1200 feet in 35 miles of latitude. A broad, shallow 
lake, with a strong current, which Senhor Candido declared 
he had visited K.W. of Tette, is assumed to be the narrow, 
deep Lake Nyassa, without current, and about 1ST.N.E. of the 
same point. Great offense is also taken because the discov- 
ery of the main sources of the Nile has been ascribed to Speke 
and Grant instead of to Ptolemy and R Lobo. 

But the main object of the Portuguese government is not 
geographical. It is to bolster up that pretense to power 
which has been the only obstacle to the establishment of 
lawful commerce and friendly relations with the native in- 
habitants of Eastern Africa. The following work contains 
abundant confirmation of all that was advanced by me at the 
Bath meeting of the British Association; and I may here add 
that it is this unwarranted assumption of power over 1360 
miles of coast — from English Eiver to Cape Delgado, where 
the Portuguese have, in fact, little real authority — which per- 
petuates the barbarism of the inhabitants. The Portuguese 
interdict all foreign commerce except at a very few points 
where they have established custom-houses, and even at these, 
by an exaggerated and obstructive tariff and differential du- 
ties, they completely shut out the natives from any trade ex- 
cept that in slaves. 

Looking from south to north, let us glance at the enor- 
mous sea-board which the Portuguese in Europe endeavor to 
make us believe belongs to them. Delagoa Bay has a small 
fort called Lorenzo Marques, but nothing beyond the walls. 
At Inhambane they hold a small strip of land by sufferance 
of the natives. Sofala is in ruins, and from Quillimane north- 



POSTSCRIPT TO PREFACE. j x 

ward for 690 miles they have only one small stockade, pro- 
tected by an armed launch in the mouth of the Eiver An- 
goza to prevent foreign vessels from trading there. Then at 
Mozambique they have the little island on which the fort 
stands, and a strip about three miles long on the main land, 
on which they have a few farms, which are protected from 
hostility only by paying the natives an annual tribute, which 
they call "having the blacks in their pay." The settlement 
has long been declining in trade and importance. It is gar- 
risoned by a few hundred sickly soldiers shut up in the fort, 
and even with a small coral island near can hardly be called 
secure. On the island of Oibo, or Iboe, an immense number 
of slaves are collected, but there is little trade of any kind. 
At Pomba Bay a small fort was made, but it is very doubtful 
whether it still exists, the attempt to form a settlement there 
having entirely failed. They pay tribute to the Zulus for the 
lands they cultivate on the right bank of the Zambesi, and 
the general effect of the pretense to power and obstruction to 
commerce is to drive the independent native chiefs to the 
Arab dhow slave-trade as the only one open to them. 

It is well known to the English government, from reliable 
documents at the Admiralty and Foreign Office, that no lon- 
ger ago than November, 1864, two months after my speech 
was delivered at Bath, when the punishment of the perpe- 
trators of an outrage on the crew of the cutter of H. M. S. 
"Lyra," near a river 45 miles S.W. of Mozambique, was de- 
manded by H. M. S. "Wasp" at Mozambique, the present gov- 
ernor general declared that he had no power over the natives 
there. They have never been subdued, and, being a fine, en- 
ergetic race, would readily enter into commercial treaties with 
foreigners, were it not for the false assertion of power by 
which the Portuguese, with the tacit consent of European 



X POSTSCRIPT TO PREFACE. 

governments, shut them out from commerce and every civil- 
izing influence. 

This Portuguese pretense to dominion is the curse of the 
negro race on the East Coast of Africa, and it would soon fall 
to the ground were it not for the moral support it derives 
from the respect paid to it by our own flag. The Emperor 
Napoleon III. disregarded it in the case of the " Charles et 
Georges," while only by the aid of English sailors has the 
government of Mozambique, on more than one occasion, been 
saved from being overturned. Our squadron on the East 
Coast costs over £70,000 a year, and, by our acquiescence in 
the sham sovereignty of the Portuguese, we effect only a par- 
tial suppression of the slave-trade, and none of the commer- 
cial benefits which have followed direct dealing with the na- 
tives on the West Coast. A new law for the abolition of 
slavery has been proposed by the King of Portugal, but it in- 
spires me with no confidence, as no means have ever been 
taken to put similar enactments already passed into execu- 
tion, and we can only view this as a new bid for still farther 
acquiescence in a system which perpetuates barbarism. Mons. 
Lacerda has unwittingly shown, by his eager advocacy, that 
the real sentiments of his employers are decidedly pro-slav- 
ery. The great fact that the Americans have rid themselves 
of the incubus of slavery, and will probably not tolerate the 
continuance of the murderous slave-trade by the Portuguese 
nation, has done more to elicit their king's recent speech than 
the opinions of his ministry. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Objects of the Expedition. — Portuguese Expedition in Search of the Ophir of 
King Solomon. — India and not Africa indicated by the Merchandise sought. 
— Failure in Sofalla. — Second Portuguese Expedition after Gold Mines. — 
Repulsed by large bodies of Natives. — Catholic Missions. — Want of reliable 
Information regarding them. — Erroneous Ideas as to the Interior of Africa. — 
Sir Roderick Murchison's Hypothesis correct. — Decrease of the Slave-trade, 
and Increase of lawful Commerce on the West Coast, owing to Lord Palmer- 
ston's Policy. — The Fatality of the Murderer attends the Slave-trader. — 
. Opinion of Rev. J. L. Wilson on the Slave-trade. — The Operations of our 
Cruisers. — 111 Effects of sealing up the East Coast. — Instructions to the Ex- 
pedition Page 1 

CHAPTER I. 

Reach the Coast. — Explore the River Luawe. — Mouths of the Zambesi. — 
Concealed to deceive English Cruisers. — The Deception palmed off on Eu- 
ropean Governments by Ministers in Portugal. — Official Testimony. — Kon- 
gone. — Scenery on the River. — Fertility of Delta Soil. — Colonos or Serfs. — 
Deep Channel of the River. — Land Luggage on Expedition Island. — Coun- 
try in a State of War. — "Free Emigrants." — Atrocities of Mariano. — Meet 
so-called "Rebels." — A Fight between Natives and Portuguese. — An Army 
waiting for Ammunition. — Birds and Beasts met with on the River. — Maza- 
ro. — The Reshipment of Merchandise there for Quillimane. — Shupanga. — 
Zulu Dominion on the right bank of the Zambesi. — Tribute paid by the 
Portuguese. — Senna and Senhor Ferrao. — Seguati or Present.— Hippopot- 
amus Hunters. — Peculiarity of Baobab-trees. — Lupata Gorge 14 

CHAPTER II. 

Meet Makololo at Tette. — Murder of Six of them by Bonga, the Son of Ny- 
aude. — Ravages of Smallpox. — Makololo supported not according to public 
Orders, but by the private Bounty of Major Sicard.— Convict Class called 
"Incorrigibles." — Superstitions about Mangoes, Coffee, and Rain-making. — 
Securing Slaves by means of domestic Ties. — Case of voluntary Slavery. — 
Cruel Nature of Half-castes. — Native love of Trade. — Native Medical Pro- 
fession. — Elephant and Crocodile Schools of Medicine. — Dice Doctors and 
their use as detective Police. — Senna and Indigo Plants. — Coal, Gold, and 
Iron. — Ascent to Kebrabasa Rapids, — Black Glaze on Rocks. — Tribe of Ba- 



xii CONTENTS. 

dema.— A Traveler's Tale.— The River Luia.— Hippopotamus Flesh.— Dif- 
ficult Traveling.— Curative Sleep.— Sunstroke.— Morumbwa Cataract.— Ke- 
brabasa surveyed from End to End Page 48 

CHAPTER III. 

Return from Kebrabasa.— Native Musicians and their Instruments. — Igno- 
rance at Tette.— Changes produced by Rain after the hot Season.— Christ- 
mas in tropical Dress. — Opinions modified by early Associations in North- 
ern Climes.— The Seasons at Tette.— Cotton-seed not needed.— African 
Fever.— Quinine not a Preventive. of. —The best Precaution and Remedy.— 
"Warburgh's Drops. "—Expedition turns from Kebrabasa toward the River 
Shire in January, 1859.— Reported Barrier to Navigation.— First Inter- 
course with unknown People. — Navigation of Shire. — Progress prevented 
by Murchison's Cataracts.— Return to Tette.— Second Trip up the Shire in 
March, 1859.— Chibisa.— Nyanja Mukulu.— Maniac Guides.— Discover Lake 
Shirwa on*the 18th of April, 1859.— Mountains.— Return to the Vessel. — 
Severe case of Fever.— Return to Tette on the 23d of June.— Vessel found 
to be built of unstable Materials. — At Kongone in August 73 

CHAPTER IV. 

Up the Shire again, August, 1859. — Mount Morambala. — Hot Fountain. — 
Chase by a Buffalo. — Nyanja Pangono, or Little Lake. — Nyanja Mukulu, 
or Great Lake. — Ancient Portuguese geographical Knowledge unavailable. 
— Chikanda-kadze. — Accident from unsuitability of Steamer. — Hippopot- 
amus Traps. — Musquitoes. — Elephants. — View of the Shire Marshes. — 

, Birds. — Palm "Wine, or Sura. — Salt-making. — Brackish Soil and superior 
Cotton. — Dakanamoio Island.— A loving Hornbill. — Chibisa. — Child sold 
into Slavery 99 

CHAPTER V. 

Leave the Vessel for Discovery of Lake Nyassa. — Manganja Highlands beau- 
tiful, well wooded, and well watered. — Pasturage. — Style of Introduction to 
the Manganja. — People Agriculturists, and Workers in Iron, Cotton, etc. — 
Foreign and indigenous Cotton. — The Pelele, or Lip-ring. — Possible Use for 
this Ornament. — Beer -drinkers. — Ordeal by Muave. — Mourning for the 
Dead. — Belief in a Supreme Being. — Pamalombe Lakelet. — Chief's Wife 
killed by a Crocodile. — Discovery of Lake Nyassa, 16th of September, 1859. 
— Its subsequent Discovery by Dr. Roscher. — The "Goree" or Slave-stick. 
— Several Modes by which the Slave-trade is supplied. — Ajawa. — Mangan- 
ja. — More suspicious than the Zambesi Tribes. — Zimika's lack of Hospital- 
ity. — Fine and bracing Climate. — Great Influence to be gained by a steam- 
er on Lake Nyassa 11G 

CHAPTER VI. 

Return to the Vessel. — Nearly Poisoned by the Juice of Cassava. — " Casse- 
reep," or Cassava Sap, a perfect Preservative of Meat. — Dr. Kirk takes the 
direct Route from Chibisa's to Tette. — Great Suffering on the Journey. — 



CONTENTS. xiii 

Magnetical Observations by Charles Livingstone. — Shire Biscuit. — Wheaten 
Flour necessary for European Stomachs. — Season for sowing Wheat. — Oft" 
to Kongone. — Two Miles of Elephants. — Our generous friend Senhor Per- 
nio. Kongone. — Beach the Vessel for Eepairs. — Arrival of H.M.S. Lynx. 

Loss of the Mail. — Leave for Tette Dec. 16th. — Governor at Shupanga. — 

His Opinions and ours. — Confessions of an old Slave-dealer. — Paul Mariano. 
—Arrival at Tette, Feb. 2d, I860.— Fabulous Silver Mine of Chicova.— Ex- 
actions of the Banyai submitted to by the Portuguese. — Sumptuary Laws. — 
Portuguese of Tette. — Wine or Climate? — Funerals. — Weddings. — Coal and 
Gold. — Defer our Departure for the Interior. — Down again to Kongone. — 
Up the Stream on the 15th of March. — Secret Canal used for Slaving. — 
Governor of Quillimane sent to discover Kongone. — Mr. Sunley's attempt to 
begin lawful Trade at River Angoxe. — Major Sicard at Mazaro. — Change 
of Names.— Its Advantages. — The "Asthmatic" very ill indeed. — Mr. Rae 
goes Home on Duty. — The Kwakwa River. — "Comical Creatures." — Mice. 
— Hope for fat Folk, or Cockroaches as aids to Banting. — Zulus come to lift 
their Rents at Senna. — Striped Senna Pigs and Fever. — Fever-plant. — 
Reach Tette on the 25th of April. — Want of Irrigation. — One Branch of 
Tette Industry Page 142 

CHAPTER VII. 

Prepare for a Journey to the Makololo Country. — Sailor's Garden.— Wheat, 
Time and Mode of Sowing. — Start from Tette May 15th, to take the Mako- 
lolo home. — Lukewarmness and Desertions. — Evil Effects of Contact with 
Slaves. — Man Lion and Lion Man. — Reasoning with a Lion. — Popular Be- 
lief. — New Path through Kebrabasa Hills. — Sandia. — Elephant -hunt. — 
Game Law. — A Feast of Elephant-meat. — We strike Zambesi by Morumb- 
wa, and complete the Survey of Kebrabasa from End to End. — Banyai 
again. — View of Kebrabasa. — Chicova Plains and open River. — Sandia's 
Report of Kebrabasa 173 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Pass from Kebrabasa on to Chicova on the 7th of June, 1860. — Native Trav- 
elers' Mode of making Fire. — Night Arrangements of the Camp. — Native 
Names of Stars. — Moon-blindness. — Our volunteer Fireman. — Native polit- 
ical Discussions. — Our Manner of Marching. — Not to make Toil of a Pleas- 
ure. — The Civilized show more endurance than the Uncivilized. — Chitora's 
Politeness. — Filtered Water preferred by native Women. — Whites Hobgob- 
lins to the Blacks. — The fear of Man on wild Animals. — First Impressions 
of a Donkey's local Powers - 192 

CHAPTER IX. 

Seams of Coal under Tette gray Sandstone.— Use of Coal unknown to the 
Natives.— Mbia kills a Hippopotamus.— Traps and Pitfalls.— Sagacity of 
Elephants at Pitfalls.— White Ants and their Galleries.— Black Soldier-ants 
lord it over the White Ants.— Language of Ants.— Biting Ants.— Rogue 



X 1V CONTENTS. 

Monkey respected. — Native Salt-making. — The Mountains. — Chikwanitsela. 
— Afflictions of Beasts. — The human Buffalo. — Mpende. — Chilondo. — Mo- 
naheng murdered. — Animals which have not been hunted with Fire-arms. 
— Pangola. — A rifle-loving Chief. — Undi and Fate of African Empires. — 
Are Africans industrious? — Arrive at Zumbo, on the Loangwa, on the 
26th of June. — Eesults of no Government. — Murder of Mpangwe. — Se- 
quasha , Page 202 

CHAPTER X. 

Beautiful Situation of Zumbo. — Church in Ruins. — Why have the Catholic 
Missions failed to perpetuate the Faith? — Ma-mburuma. — Anti-slavery 
Principles a Recommendation. — Jujubes. — Tsetse. — Dr. Kirk dangerously 
ill in the Mountain Forest. — Our Men's feats of Hunting. — Hyenas. — Hon- 
ey-guides. — Instinct of, how to be accounted for, Self-interest or Friendship ? 
— A Serpent. — Mpangwe's Village deserted. — Large Game abundant. — Dif- 
ference of Flavor in. — Sights seen in Marching. — " Smokes" from Grass- 
burnings. — River Chongwe. — Bazizulu and their superior Cotton. — Escape 
from Rhinoceros. — The Wild Dog. — Families Flitting. — Tombanyama. — 
Confluence of the Kafue 221 

CHAPTER XI. 

Semalembue. — Nchomokela. — Mr. Moffat's Mission to Moselekatse heard of. — 
Native Game-law. — Mountains. — Ancient State of the Country. — Neither 
Art nor Power possess the Effect of ancient Miracles. — Jealousy of Strangers 
not African, but Arab. — The Bawe and " Baenda pezi," or "Go-nakeds." 
— Their Hospitality. — Leave Zambesi, and ascend Zungwe to Batoka High- 
lands. — Sebetuane. — A Cairn. — Batoka Men of Peace. — Arboriculturists. — 
Grave-yards. — Muave. — Tsetse Medicine. — Desire for Peace. — Corn exten- 
sively cultivated. — A Poet and Minstrel. — Musical Instruments. — Our naked 
Friend.— Polite Tobacco-smokers. — Bawe never visited by Europeans before. 
— Slave-trade follows our Footsteps. — Attempt by the Governor General of 
Mozambique to shut up Rovuma. — Seabenzo. — Elephant killed. — Numbers 
annually slain. — Meteor. — The Falls visible upward of twenty Miles off. — 
Fever treated and untreated. — Moshobotwane. — Meet Makololo near the 
Falls '. 237 

CHAPTER XII. 

Mosi-oa-tunya, or Victoria Falls. — Visit Garden Island. — Words fail to de- 
scribe the Falls. — Twice the Depth of Niagara. — Mosi-oa-tunya bears the 
Palm. — Filled the native Mind with Awe. — No Portuguese Record of them. 
— Two Slaves reach Tette from Cassange, and make the " Portuguese Road" 
across Africa. — Mashotlane and his Prisoner 268 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Condition of Fugitives and Captives in native Tribes.— Servitude in the Inte- 
rior light as compared to Slavery on the Coast. — Molele's Village. — Scarcity 
of Food.— Tianyane identical with OurebL— The Poku.— Dr. Livingstone 



CONTENTS. 



XV 



consulted on the Value of Horses. — Mparira, village of Mokompa. — Sting- 
less Bee. — Take Canoe for Sesheke. — Sekeletu's Attempt at enforcing Quaran- 
tine. — The Chiefs' Messengers. — "The Argument" for learning to read. — 
"Free Pratique." — Native Instructions. — The Cattle-post School. — Sesheke 
Old and New Town. — Sekeletu. — Nothing like Beef. — " Beef with and Beef 
without." — Visitors. — Sekeletu's Leprosy and its attendant Evils. — Disease 
pronounced Incurable by native Doctors. — Taken in hand by a Doctress. — 
Handed over to Drs. Livingstone and Kirk. — Improvement of the Patient. 
— Description of the Disease. — Tea and preserved Fruits from Benguela. — 
No Ivory, no Slave-trade. — Effect of Sekeletu's Orders in closing the Slave- 
market. — Fashion. — Horse-dealing. — Peculiar Style of Racing. — " The 
household Cavalry." — Produce of the Interior in Grain. — No Vegetables. — 
No Fruit. — Mr. Baldwin, and Mr. Helmore's Party. — Sad breaking up of the 
Mission. — Fever, not Poison, the cause of Deaths Page 280 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Sekeletu and our Presents. — His Idea of Artillery Practice. — Sebituane's Sis- 
ter's description of the first Appearance of Fever. — The Makololo the most 
intelligent of all the Tribes seen by us. — The Makololo of Old and Young 
Africa. — The Women, their Appearance and Ornaments. — Results of Po- 
lygamy. — Respectability reckoned by the Number of Wives. — Apparent, but 
not real, buying of Wives. — Elegant Amusements of the Ladies. — Matok- 
wane. — Smoking and its Effects. — Novel Use of a Spoon. — Raw Butter. — 
Begging. — The Chief's Perquisites. — The Makololo who had seen the Sea. 
— Justice among the Makololo. — The Rights of Labor. — Religious Instruc- 
tion. — Native Views on Matrimony. — The Chief and the Head Men. — Capi- 
tal Punishment. — An old Warrior. — Ancient Costume of the Makololo. — 
Houses built by the Women. — Amusements of the Children. — Makololo 
Faith in Medicine. — Dr. Livingstone revisits Linyanti. — The Wagon left 
there in 1853 is found in Safe Keeping, with its Contents.— A native Proc- 
lamation. — Burial-place of Mr. Helmore and his Companions. — Faithfulness 
of the Makololo. — Sekeletu's Health improves. — His Esteem for Dr. Kirk. — 
His Desire for an English Settlement on the Batoka Highlands. — Stealing 
Cattle considered no Crime. — Divine Service at Sesheke. — Native Doubts as 
to the Possibility of a Resurrection 299 

CHAPTER XV. 

Departure from Sesheke on the 17th of September, I860.— Convoyed by Pit- 
sane and Leshore. — Embassy to Sinamane. — Leshore and his Crew. — Mo- 
bita and the Canoe-men. — Zambesi Fish, Ngwesi and Konokono. — Fish-bone 
Medicine. — Renew the Garden at Mosi-oa-tunya. — Kalunda and Moamba 
Falls. — Native desire of Pleasing. — Hospitality of the Batoka. — Native 
Fruits. — Valuable oil-yielding Tree. — Indian Trees in the centre of Africa. 
— Golongwe. — Great Heat. — Corns on the Feet not peculiar to the Civil- 
ized. — River Longkwe. — Gipsy Bellows in Africa. — Tin. — Chilombe Islet. 

— Native Dress. — Sinamane and his Long Spears 321 

2 



xvi CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Sinamane. — Canoe Navigation. — Moemba. — Water-drawing Stockades. — Gen- 
erosity of the Batoka. — Purchase of a Canoe. — Ant-lions. — Herd of Hippo- 
potami. — Cataract Doctor ofKariba. — Albinos, human and hippopotamic. — 
Meet Sequasha, not quite so Black as painted. — Native Mode of Salutation. 
— Karivua. — Gallant Conduct of the Makololo. — Breakfast interrupted by 
Mambo Kazai. — Dinner spoiled by pretended Aid. — Banyai. — Rapids of 
Kebrabasa. — Dr. Kirk in Danger. — Sad Loss of MSS., etc. — Death of one 
of our Donkeys. — Amiable Squeamishness of Makololo. — Dinner a foPanzo. 
— Reach Tette on the 23d of November. — "Jacks of all Trades." — Imposi- 
tion practiced on the King of Portugal's Colonial Scheme Page 335 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Down to Kongone. — Latest Bulletin of " the Asthmatic." — The old Lady's De- 
mise. — Reach Senna by Canoe. — Unprofitable Trading by Slaves. — The 
Biter bit, or Sequasha squeezed. — Coals dear by Slave Labor. — His Excel- 
lency's Yacht. — Kongone. — English Papers. — Flesh, Fowl, Fish, and har- 
monious Crabs of the Mangrove Swamps. — Busungu. — The Sawfish.... 357 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Arrival of "the Pioneer." — Mission Staff taken to Johanna. — Bishop Mac- 
kenzie joins the Expedition up the Rovuma. — Fall of Water. — Return to Co- 
moro. — Johanna. — Ascent of the Shire. — "The Pioneer" draws too much 
Water. — Charles Livingstone labors to stimulate Cotton Culture. — Want of 
Agents on the East Coast compared to the West Coast. — England's Labors 
there. — Their Value. — Expedition eminently successful. — Turning-point of 
Success. — Slaves rescued. — The Bishop accepts the Chief's invitation to Ma- 
gomero. — Visit to the Ajawa, well-meant, ill-taken. — Stand at Bay. — Re- 
treat of the Ajawa. — Bishop Mackenzie's Mission at Magomero. — Extent 
of Dr. Livingstone's Responsibility. — Return to the Ship 367 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Fresh Start for Lake Nyassa. — Carry a Boat past the Cataracts. — Humpbacked 
Spokesman. — Lakelet Pamalombe. — Indications of Malaria. — Lake Nyassa. 
—Depth. — Size. — Shape. — Bays. — Mountains and Storms. — Crowds of 
People. — Midge Cake. — Fish, Sanjika, etc. — Apparent Laziness of the Peo- 
ple.— Torpidity of Skin.— Buaze Nets.— Bark Cloth.— Beauty a la "Pelele." 
— Marenga's Generosity. — Horrors of inland Slave-trade. — Thieves; the 
first Robbery we suffered in Africa. — Native Graves. — Mazitu or Zulus. — 
Four days' Separation. — Rough Roads.— Man's Enemy, Man. — Our Dice 
Diviner vanishes, but reappears. — Elephants. — Arabs from Katanga. — Arab 
Geography of Tanganyika and Nyassa. — The Slave-trade. — Reed Huts in 
Papyrus. — Young Women got up for Sale. — Sensible old Woman. — Meet 
marauding Ajawa at Mikena's. — Elephants' athletic Sports 386 



CONTENTS. X V.ii 

CHAPTER XX. 

Encouraging Prospects. — Bishop Mackenzie. — Our Progress down the River 
arrested. — The River flooded in January, 1862. — Mariano resumes his Ca- 
reer of Slave-hunting. — The Governor plays at Hide and Seek with him. — 
Captain Alvez. — Reach the Zambesi. — A Slave-owner's Ideas of his Slaves. 
— "Wisdom and Humanity of Napoleon III. — At Luabo. — Arrival of H.M.S. 
Gorgon. — The Pioneer out of Repair. — Captain Wilson proceeds up the 
Shire. — Continuation of the Story of the Bishop's Mission. — He descends 
the Shire in a small Canoe. — Loses Clothing, Medicine, etc. — Fever. — Death 
and Burial. — His Character. — Kindness of the Makololo. — Death of Mr. 
Burrup. — Captain Wilson returns to Shupanga. — The Rev. James Stewart 
examines the Country previous to attempting a Mission by the Free Church 
of Scotland. — Portuguese Policy and Slave-trading are the chief Obstacles 
to any Mission. — Personal Responsibility ignored and Blame put on others. 
— Mrs. Livingstone's Illness, and Death on the 27th of April, 1862 Page 421 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Dr. Kirk and Charles Livingstone proceed to Tette. — Belchior's Wars. — Gov- 
ernor Almeida's praiseworthy Interdict. — Connivance of the Governor Gen- 
eral at the Slave-trade. — Masters and Slaves. — No love lost. — Launch of the 
Lady Nyassa. — Native Speculations on the Buoyancy of Iron. — Freedom of 
Discussion on certain Subjects. — Birds at Play. — Our new Quarter-master. 
— Start of the Lady Nyassa deferred. — Portuguese "prohibitive" permission 
for Trading. — Up the Rovuma in Boats. — Inhabitants. — Mats. — Tsetse. — 
Zigzag Channel. — A queer Fish. — Canoe Rivalry. — The Englishman in Af- 
rica. — An old Lady opens the Market. — Men with Pelele. — Mabiha. — Ma- 
koa. — Slave Route to Kilwa. — Life on a Sand-bank. — Unprovoked Hostility. 
— Hives and Honey. — Coal found. — A jolly young Waterwoman. — Our 
Progress stopped by rocky Narrows. — Sources of the Rovuma. — Crocodiles. 
— Their Eggs. — Hunting the Senze. — Back again to the Pioneer 441 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Quillimane. — Colonel Nunez. — Government opposed to Agriculture. — Passport 
System. — The Quillimane "Do-nothings." — Return to the Zambesi. — Shu- 
panga, December 19th, 1862. — Our Mazaro Men and their Relations. — Fam- 
ine at Tette. — Dispersion of Slaves. — "The Portuguese don't Farm" nor 
Hunt. — January 10th, the Lady Nyassa in tow. — Mariano's Atrocities. — 
The Bishop's Grave. — Smell and Hearing in Animals. — Angling for Croco- 
dile. — Frightful Sight. — Crocodile versus Makololo. — Penetration of Air 
throughout the Systems of Birds. — Return of Mr. Thornton. — Kilimanjaro. 
— Mr. Thornton's generous Kindness to the Mission. — Journey to Tette too 
much for him. — His Death and Grave. — Wide-spread Desolation. — Slave- 
trade and Famine. — Marsh Culture. — Lethargy of the remnant of the Peo- 
ple. — Skeletons. — Abolition of the Slave-trade a sine qua. non. — Influence of 

• the English Steamer on Lake Nyassa. — Road-making. — Green Freshness 
of Hills. — No Provisions to be bought. — No Labor.— Poor Food and de- 



xviii CONTENTS. 

pressed Spirits the forerunners of Disease. — Dr. Kirk and C. Livingstone or- 
dered home. — Dr. Livingstone 111. — Dr. Kirk remains to attend him. — 19th 
of May, Dr. Kirk and C. Livingstone leave. — Eemonstrance to the Lisbon 
Government. — Empty Results. — Conduct of Portuguese Statesmen toward 
Africa. — Dr. Livingstone and Mr. Rae start to look after our old Boat. — 
Employments of those left behind. — "Woman wounded by an Arrow. — Te- 
nacity of Life.— Dr. Meller Page 470 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

June 16th, 1863, start for the Upper Cataracts. — Cultivation. — Cotton. — Huts 
empty, or tenanted by Skeletons. — Buffalo-birds and dread of the poisoned 
Arrow. — Kombi, a species of Strophanthus, the Poison employed. — The 'Nga 
Poison. — Its Effects. — Instinct in Man. — Mukuru-Madse. — Sanu, or prickly- 
seeded Grass. — Its Use. — Native Paths. — Guinea-fowls. — Cotton Patches. — 
Expedition recalled. — No other Course open to us, Labor being all swept 
away by Portuguese Slave-trading. — Mr. Waller witnesses a small part of 
the Trade. — Friendliness of the Ajawa and Makololo to the English. — Try 
to take another Boat past the Cataracts. — Loss of the Boat. — Penitence of 
the Losers. — The Cataracts. — Geology 489 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Traveling Beverage. — Good Behavior of the English Sailors. — Motola Island. 
— Starvation Fare of Natives. — New Course of March. — The Rivi-rivi. — A 
Country after the scourge of War has passed over it. — Lose our Way. — Hos- 
pitality of the People. — Kirk's Range. — Valley of Goa or Gova. — Disintegra- 
tion of Rocks in a hot Climate. — Our Party viewed as Slave-traders. — Ma- 
tunda. — Reach the Heel of Lake Nyassa. — Katosa's Village. — Ajawa Mi- 
grations. — Native Agriculture. — Bishop Mackenzie's Idea of native Agri- 
culture. — Cotton. — Chinsamba. — The Assyrian Countenance the true Negro 
Type. — The Babisa. — Laugh of native Women. — Cry of Children. — Course 
N.E. to the Shores of Lake Molamba. — The Chia Fish-net. — Hoes. — Sav- 
ages could not have continued to Live had they been entirely Uninstructed. 
— They needed a superhuman Instructor 506 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Kota-kota Bay. — Arabs building a Dhow. — Natives congregate to any Point 
which affords hope of Protection from War. — Does Mohammedanism spread 
in Africa ? — Pagan Africans superior in Morality to followers of the False 
Prophet. — Leave for the West. — Ascent of the Plateau. — Native Ceremony 
of Initiation. — Slave Route. — Effects of rarefied Air. — Primitive African 
Religion inculcates Humility. — Unlike Mohammedanism. — Cruel Rites limit- 
ed to the small district of Dahomey. — Witchcraft, or influence of Plants. — 
Absence of Idol Worship. — Humid Climate. — Loangwa of the Lake and Lo- 
angwa of Maravi. — Matumboka. — Filing the Teeth and Tattooing. — Gun- 
powder the source of the Slave-trader's Power. — Slave-hunters' Mode of 
Attack. — Muazi in Kasungu. — Causes of Inundations. — Rains. — Climate 
dependent on prevailing Winds. — The Watershed. — Native Geography. — 



CONTENTS. x ix 

Comparison between Africa and India. — Fossils. — The Iron Age. — Minute 
Topography. — Native Language Page 536 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Reasons for returning. — Dispatch from H. M.'s Government. — A Thief. — Af- 
rican Women rarely address Strangers. — Employments of Women. — Grind- 
ing Corn. — Brewing Beer. — Drinking-bouts 565 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Clearings in Forests. — Resemblance of Hunters to ancient Egyptian Figures. 
— Muazi. — Difficulty about Guides. — Babisa undertake -to lead us to Chin- 
samba's. — Babisa and Manganja Heads. — Different Characteristics. — Dia- 
lects different, though akin.— Nkoma.— The Bua.— We are taken for Mazi- 
tu, and treated accordingly. — Intractable Head Man. — Well-broken-in Hus- 
band. — Oppressive Stillness of the deserted Country. — Bangwe. — Meet the 
Mazitu. — Show a bold Front with Success. — Zachariah mends his Pace. — 
We are taken for a War Party. — On the 8th of October we reach Molamba 
on Lake Nyassa. — The unpaid Guide and his doings. — Polygamy. — Loapula 
and Tanganyika. — Babisa's knowledge of the Interior tested. — False Alarm 
of Mazitu. — Prevailing direction of Wind easterly. — Shores of the Lake. — 
Fugitives and their Distress. — Tobacco-traders attacked by Mazitu. — Guns 
versus Bows. — Mosapo. — Chinsamba's. — Minute Information of a Chief. — 
Africans not so degraded as described. — Presents. — Guides. — Brisk Slave- 
trading. — Sad Thoughts. — On the 15th of October we reach Katosa's. — His 
description of the Conduct of the Ajawa. — Their admiration of Red Hair. 
— Sugar-cane probably indigenous. — Bamboos. — Katosa is invested in an 
Officer's Coat and Epaulets. — His present Village and his former one. — On 
the 20th of October we arrive at Motunda's. — Hidden Stores of Provisions. 
— Kabambe and Nyango. — The Goa or Gova Valley. — The Lesungwe. — 
Kindness of Native Women. — On the 31st of October we reach the Mukuru- 
Madse. — Thunder and Rain. — Wet Clothes and Fever 572 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Gratifying Confidence of Ajawa. — Annual Rest of tropical Trees. — Rise in the 
Shire insufficient. — Bishop Mackenzie's Successor. — Unfulfilled Hopes. — 
What a Missionary ought to be. — Abandonment of Mission unnecessary. — 
Success of West Coast Missions. — January 19th, the Shire in Flood. — Leave 
Chibisa's. — Delayed. — Reach Morambala on the 2d of February. — Effluvium 
from the Water. — Its Effects. — Take on Board Orphans and Widows. — The 
Zambesi in Flood. — Islands in the Zambesi. — Formation of the Delta. — 
Death of Mariano. — Very moderate Exports. — Taken in Tow. — Heavy Gale. 
— Behavior of the "Lady of the Lake." — Promptitude and Skill of Captain 
Chapman, of H.M.S. Ariel. — Close packing of live Cargoes perhaps neces- 
sary. — The Pioneer takes rescued Orphans and Widows with Mr. Waller to 
the Cape. — Caboceira. — M. Soares. — New Governor of Mozambique. — New 
Species of Pedalia. — On the 16th of April we reach Zanzibar. — Hospitality 
of Foreigners and of our own Countrymen. — On the 30th of April we leave 



xx CONTENTS. 

Zanzibar on board the Lady Nyassa for Bombay. — African Sailors. — Arrival 
at Bombay Page 596 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

Recapitulation of the Results of the Expedition. — Discovery of a Port, and a 
means of Transit to healthy Highlands. — Fertility of Soil. — Indigo. — Cotton. 
— Climate and Soil admirably suited for its Cultivation. — Large Cotton- 
bushes of the Interior. — Tobacco and Castor-oil Plants, and Sugar-cane. 
— Grasses. — Continuous Crops. — Eat Cattle. — Droughts. — Hard Woods 
common. — Timber scarce. — Sarsaparilla. — Calumba-root. — Eibrous and oil- 
yielding Plants and Trees. — Want of heart to describe discoveries in Africa. 
— Gloom of the Slave-trade. — Different Ways in which it is carried on. — 
Direct European agency in the Traffic. — Napoleon III. — "Engage System." 
— Slave-trade a barrier to all Progress. — Its Effects on Slave-owners' Coun- 
try. — Cause of the War in America. — Similar Effect of centuries of Barbar- 
ism on African and other Nations. — The African physically, his Lighthead- 
edness. — Fitness for Servitude not attributable to Climate. — Form of Gov- 
ernment Patriarchal. — African Stagnation from the same cause as that of 
other Nations. — Man an unconscious Co-operator. — Guided by Wisdom not 
his own. — Is the greatest Power derivable from Science reserved for Chris- 
tians ? — The African's Capability for Christianity. — Kindness the best Road 
to the Heart. — Sierra Leone Missions. — Sunday at Sierra Leone. — State- 
ment of Captain Burton. — Statistics of Sierra Leone. — Continuance of Lord 
Palmerston's Policy needed. — Trade Returns. — Colonel Ord's Report. — In- 
fluences of Settlements. — Mortality on board the West Coast Squadron. — 
Treatment of Fever. — Missionary Societies on the West Coast. — Our Amer- 
ican Missionary Brethren. — Suggestions for a Solution of our Convict Ques- 
tion.— Colonel Ord on Settlements 613 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page 

1. Bird's-eye View of the Great Cataracts of the Zambesi Frontispiece. 

2. Pandanus or Screw Palm, covered with climbing Plants, near the 

Kongone Canal of the Zambesi 20 

3. View of Mazaro — Fight between Portuguese and Rebels in the dis- 

tance 31 

4. Dance of Landeens, or Zulus, come to lift the Annual Tribute from 

the Portuguese at Shupanga 41 

5. Weapons for killing the Hippopotamus 44 

6. View of a Portion of Kebrabasa Eapids 61 

7. Women with Water-pots, listening to the Music of the Marimba, 

Sansa, and Pan's Pipes 72 

8. Mamvira Cataract, the first or lowest of Murchison's Cataracts 89 

9. Group of Native Musicians 98 

10. African Fiddle of one String . 105 

11. View of Steamer, Traps, and dead Hippopotamus 107 

12. Fish-basket 112 

13. Native Web, and Weaver smoking the huge Tobacco-pipe of the 

Country 124 

14. Blacksmith's Forge and Bellows of Goatskin 125 

15. Pelele, or Lip-ring of Manganja Woman 127 

16. "Goree," or Slave-stick 137 

17. Landeens, or Zulus, who lift Tribute of the Portuguese at Senna, ex- 

hibiting War Exercises 152 

18. Wedding Procession at Tette 160 

19. The Ma-Robert in the Zambesi above Senna, with the saddle-shaped 

Hill Kevramisa in the distance 169 

20. Group of Hippopotami 204 

21. Tunnels of Ants , 206 

22. Musical Instruments 255 

23. Bellows and otherTools 333 

24. Waist-belt 334 

25. Gang of Captives met at Mbame's on their Way to Tette 376 

26. An old Manganja Woman, showing the Pelele, or Lip-ring, and the 

Tattooing in intersecting Lines on Face, Arms, and Body 416 

27. The Grave of Mrs. Livingstone under the Baobab-tree, near to Shu- 

panga House 439 



xx ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

28. Beehive. Baskets employed by Women to catch Fish 463 

29. View of Quillimane and of the "Pioneer" 471 

30. Poisoned Arrows 491 

31. Females Hoeing 524 

32. Chia Hand-net 531 

33. Manganja Spears 532 

34. Woman grinding 569 

35. Native Mill for grinding Corn 570 

36. Maravi Bow 583 

Map to illustrate Dr. Livingstone's Travels At the end. 



THE 



ZAMBESI AND ITS TRIBUTARIES. 



INTKODUCTIOK 



Objects of the Expedition. — Portuguese Expedition in Search of the Ophir of 
King Solomon. — India and not Africa indicated by the Merchandise sought. 
— Failure in Sofalla. — Second Portuguese Expedition after Gold Mines. — 
Kepulsed by large bodies of Natives. — Catholic Missions. — Want of reliable 
Information regarding them. — Erroneous Ideas as to the Interior of Africa. — 
Sir Koderick Murchison's Hypothesis correct. — Decrease of the Slave-trade, 
and Increase of lawful Commerce on the West Coast, owing to Lord Palmer- 
ston's Policy. — The Eatality of the Murderer attends the Slave-trader. — 
Opinion of Rev. J. L. Wilson on the Slave-trade. — The Operations of our 
Cruisers. — 111 Effects of sealing up the East Coast. — Instructions to the Ex- 
pedition. 

When first I determined on publishing the narrative of 
my " Missionary Travels," I had a great misgiving as to 
whether the criticism my endeavors might provoke would 
be friendly or the reverse, more particularly as I felt that I 
had then been so long a sojourner in the wilderness as to be 
quite a stranger to the British public. But I am now in this, 
my second essay of authorship, cheered by the conviction 
that very many readers, who are personally unknown to me, 
will receive this narrative with the kindly consideration and 
allowances of friends ; and that many more, under the genial 
influences of an innate love of liberty, and of a desire to see 
the same social and religious blessings they themselves en- 
joy, disseminated throughout the world, will sympathize with 
me in the efforts by which I have striven, however imper- 

A 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

fectly, to elevate the position and character of our fellow-men 
in Africa. This knowledge makes me doubly anxious to 
render my narrative acceptable to all my readers ; but, in the 
absence of any excellence in literary composition, the natural 
consequence of my pursuits, I have to offer only a simple ac- 
count of a mission which, with respect to the objects pro- 
posed to be thereby accomplished, formed a noble contrast to 
some of the earlier expeditions to Eastern Africa. I believe 
that the information it will give, respecting the people visited 
and the countries traversed, will not be materially gainsaid 
by any future commonplace traveler like myself, who may 
be blessed with fair health and a gleam of sunshine in his 
breast. This account is written in the earnest hope that it 
may contribute to that information which will yet cause the 
great and fertile continent of Africa to be no longer kept 
wantonly sealed, but made available as the scene of European 
enterprise, and will enable its people to take a place among 
the nations of the earth, thus securing the happiness and 
prosperity of tribes now sunk in barbarism or debased by 
slavery ; and, above all, I cherish the hope that it may lead 
to the introduction of the blessings of the Gospel. 

The first expedition sent to East Africa, after the Portu- 
guese had worked a passage round the Cape, was instituted 
under the auspices of the government of Portugal, for the 
purpose, it is believed, of discovering the land of Ophir, made 
mention of in Holy Scripture as the country whence King 
Solomon obtained sandal wood, ivory, apes, peacocks, and 
gold. The terms used by the Jews to express the first four 
articles had, according to Max Muller, no existence in the 
Hebrew language, but were words imported into it from the 
Sanscrit. It is curious, then, that the search was not directed 
to the Coast of India, more particularly as Sanscrit was known 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

on the Malabar Coast, and there also peacocks and sandal- 
wood are met with in abundance. The Portuguese, like 
some others of more modern times, were led to believe that 
Sofalla, because sometimes pronounced Zophar by the Arabs, 
from being the lowest or most southerly port they visited, 
was identical with the Ophir alluded to in Sacred History. 

Eastern Africa had been occupied from the most remote 
times by traders from India and the Eed Sea. Yasco da 
Gama, in 1497-8, found them firmly established at Mozam- 
bique, and, after reaching India, he turned with longing eyes 
from Calicut toward Sofalla, and actually visited it in 1502. 
As the Scriptural Ophir, it was expected to be the most lu- 
crative of all the Portuguese stations ; and, under the impres- 
sion that an important settlement could be established there, 
the Portuguese conquered, at great loss of both men and 
money, the district in which the gold- washings were situated; 
but, in the absence of all proper machinery, a vast amount of 
labor returned so small an amount of gain, that they aban- 
doned them in disgust. 

The next expedition, consisting of three ships and a. thou- 
sand men, mostly gentlemen volunteers, left Lisbon in 1569 
for the conquest of the gold mines or washings of the Chief 
of Monomotapa, west of Tette, and of those in Manica, still 
farther west, but in a more southerly direction ; and also to 
find a route to the West Coast. In this last object they fail- 
ed; and to this day it has been accomplished by only one 
European, and that an Englishman. The expedition was 
commanded by Francisco Barreto, and abundantly supplied 
with horses, asses, camels, and provisions. Ascending the 
Zambesi as far as Senna, they found many Arab and other 
traders already settled there, who received the strangers 
with great hospitality. The horses, however, having passed 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

through, a district abounding with tsetse, an insect whose 
bite is fatal to domestic animals, soon showed the emaciation 
peculiar to the poison ; and Senna being notoriously un- 
healthy, the sickness of both men and horses aroused Barre- 
to's suspicion that poison had been administered by the in- 
habitants, most of whom, consequently, he put to the sword 
or blew away from his guns. Marching beyond Senna with 
a party five hundred and sixty strong, he and his men suf- 
fered terribly from hunger and thirst, and, after being re- 
peatedly assaulted by a large body of natives, the expedition 
was compelled to return without ever reaching the gold mines 
which Barreto so eagerly sought. 

Previous to this, however, devoted Eoman Catholic mis- 
sionaries had penetrated where an army could not go ; for 
Senhor Bordalo, in his excellent Historical Essays, mentions 
that the Jesuit father Goncalo da Silveira had already suffer- 
ed martyrdom by command of the Chief of Monomotapa. 
Indeed, missionaries of that body of Christians established 
themselves in a vast number of places in Eastern Africa, as 
the ruins of mission stations still testify ; but, not having suc- 
ceeded in meeting with any reliable history of the labors of 
these good men, it is painful for me to be unable to contra- 
dict the calumnies which Portuguese writers still heap on 
their memory. So far as the impression left on the native 
mind goes, it is decidedly favorable to their zeal and piety ; 
while the writers referred to roundly assert that the mission- 
aries engaged in the slave-trade, which is probably as false as 
the more modern scandals occasionally retailed against their 
Protestant brethren. Philanthropists sometimes err in ac- 
cepting the mere gossip of coast villages as facts, when as- 
serting the atrocities of our countrymen abroad ; while others, 
pretending to regard all philanthropy as weakness, yet prac- 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

ticing that silliest of all hypocrisies, trie endeavor to appear 
worse than they are, accept and publish the mere brandy- 
and- water twaddle of immoral traders against a body of men 
who, as a whole, are an honor to human kind. In modern 
missionary literature, now widely spread, we have a record 
which will probably outlive all misrepresentation ; and it is 
much to be regretted that there is no available Catholic lit- 
erature of the same nature, and that none of the translations 
which may have been made into the native tongues can now 
be consulted. We can not believe that these good men 
would risk their lives for the unholy gains which, even were 
they lawful, by the rules of their order they could not enjoy ; 
but it would be extremely interesting to all their successors 
to know exactly what were the real causes of their failure in 
perpetuating the faith. 

In order that the following narrative may be clearly un- 
derstood, it is necessary to call to mind some things which 
tool^ place previous to the Zambesi Expedition being sent 
out. Most geographers are aware that, before the discovery 
of Lake ISTgami and the well- watered country in which the 
Makololo dwell, the idea prevailed that a large part of the 
interior of Africa consisted of sandy deserts, into which riv- 
ers ran and were lost. During my journey in 1852-6, from 
sea to sea, across the south intertropical part of the continent, 
it was found to be a well-watered country, with large tracts 
of fine fertile soil covered with forest, and beautiful grassy 
valleys, occupied by a considerable population ; and one of 
the most wonderful waterfalls in the world was brought to 
light. The peculiar form of the continent was then ascer- 
tained to be an elevated plateau, somewhat depressed in the 
centre, and with fissures in the sides by which the rivers es- 
caped to the sea ; and this great fact in physical geography 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

can never be referred to without calling to mind the remark- 
able hypothesis by which the distinguished President of 
the Eoyal Geographical Society (Sir Eoderick I. Murchison) 
clearly indicated this peculiarity, before it was verified by 
actual observation of the altitudes of the country and by the 
courses of the rivers. New light was thrown on other por- 
tions of the continent by the famous travels of Dr. Barth, by 
the researches of the Church of England Missionaries, Krapf, 
Erkhardt, and Eebman, by the persevering efforts of Dr. 
Baikie, the last martyr to the climate and English enterprise, 
by the journey of Francis Galton, and by the most interest- 
ing discoveries of Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria Nyanza 
by Captain Burton, and by Captain Speke, whose untimely 
end we all so deeply deplore. Then followed the researches 
of Yan der Decken, Thornton, and others ; and last of all, 
the grand discovery of the main source of the Nile, which 
every Englishman must feel an honest pride in knowing was 
accomplished by our gallant countrymen, Speke and Grant. 
The fabulous torrid zone, of parched and burning sand, was 
now proved to be a well-watered region resembling North 
America in its fresh-water lakes, and India in its hot humid 
lowlands, jungles, ghauts, and cool highland plains. 

In our exploration the chief object in view was not to dis- 
cover objects of nine days' wonder, to gaze and be gazed at 
by barbarians, but to note the climate, the natural produc- 
tions, the local diseases, the natives and their relation to the 
rest of the world — all which were observed with that pecul- 
iar interest which, as regards the future, the first white man 
can not but feel in a continent whose history is only just be- 
ginning. When proceeding to the West Coast, in order to 
find a path to the sea by which lawful commerce might be 
introduced to aid missionary operations, it was quite striking 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

to observe, several hundreds of miles from the ocean, the 
very decided influence of that which is known as Lord Pal- 
merston's policy. Piracy had been abolished, and the slave- 
trade so far suppressed, that it was spoken of by Portuguese, 
who had themselves been slave-traders, as a thing of the 
past. Lawful commerce had increased from an annual total 
of £20,000 in ivory and gold dust, to between two and three 
millions, of which one million was in palm oil to our own 
country. Over twenty Missions had been established, with 
schools, in which more than twelve thousand pupils were 
taught. Life and property were rendered secure on the 
Coast, and comparative peace imparted to millions of people 
in the interior, and all this at a time when, by the speeches 
of influential men in England, the world was given to un- 
derstand that the English cruisers had done nothing but ag- 
gravate the evils of the slave-trade. It is so reasonable to 
expect that self-interest would induce the slave-trader to do 
his utmost to preserve the lives by which he makes his 
gains, that men yielded ready credence to the plausible the- 
ory; but the atrocious waste of human life was just as great 
when the slave-trade was legal ; it always has been, and 
must be, marked by the want of foresight characteristic of 
the murderer. Every one wonders why he who has taken 
another's life did not take this, that, or the other precaution 
to avoid detection ; and every one may well wonder why 
slave-traders have always, by -overcrowding and all its evils, 
acted so much in direct opposition to their own interests; 
but it is the fatality of the murderer ; the loss of life from 
this cause simply baffles exaggeration. 

On this subject the opinion of the Eev. J. L. Wilson, a 
most intelligent American missionary, who has written by 
far the ablest work on the West Coast that has yet appeared, 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

is worth a host. He declares that the efforts of the English 
government are worthy of all praise. Had it not been for 
the cruisers, and especially those of England, Africa would 
still have been inaccessible to missionary labor ; " and it is 
devoutly to be hoped," he adds, " that these noble and disin- 
terested measures may not be relaxed until the foul demon 
be driven away from the earth." The slave-trade is the 
greatest obstacle in existence to civilization and commercial 
progress ; and as the English are the most philanthropic 
people in the world, and will probably always have the lar- 
gest commercial stake in the African continent, the policy 
for its suppression in every possible way shows thorough 
wisdom and foresight. 

When, in pursuit of the same object, the East Coast was 
afterward reached, it was found sealed up. Although praise- 
worthy efforts had been made by her majesty's cruisers, yet, 
in consequence of foreigners being debarred from entering 
the country, neither traders nor missionaries had established 
themselves. The trade was still only in a little ivory, gold 
dust, and slaves, just as it was on the West Coast before Lord 
Palmerston's policy came into operation there. It was, how- 
ever, subsequently discovered that the Portuguese govern- 
ment professed itself willing, nay, anxious, to let the country 
be opened to the influences of civilization and lawful com- 
merce — indeed, it could scarcely be otherwise, seeing that 
not a grain of benefit ever accrued to Portugal by shutting 
it up ; and the Zambesi, a large river, promised to be a fine 
inlet to the highlands and interior generally ; the natives 
were agricultural, and all fond of trading ; the soil was fer- 
tile — indigo, cotton, tobacco, sugar-cane, and other articles of 
value, were already either cultivated or growing wild. It 
seemed, therefore, that if this region could be opened to law- 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

ful commerce and Christian Missions, it would have the ef- 
fect of aiding or supplementing our cruisers in the same way 
as had been done by the missionaries and traders on the 
West Coast, and that an inestimable service would be there- 
by rendered to Africa and Europe. 

The main object of the Zambesi Expedition, as our instruc- 
tions from her majesty's government explicitly stated, was 
to extend the knowledge already attained of the geography 
and mineral and agricultural resources of Eastern and Cen- 
tral Africa — to improve our acquaintance with the inhabit- 
ants, and to endeavor to engage them to apply themselves 
to industrial pursuits and to the cultivation of their lands, 
with a view to the production of raw material to be exported 
to England in return for British manufactures ; and it was 
hoped that, by encouraging the natives to occupy themselves 
in the development of the resources of the country, a con- 
siderable advance might be made toward the extinction of 
the slave-trade, as they would not be long in discovering 
that the former would eventually be a more certain source 
of profit than the latter. The Expedition was sent in ac- 
cordance with the settled policy of the English government ; 
and the Earl of Clarendon being then at the head of the 
Foreign Office, the Mission was organized under his imme- 
diate care. When a change of government ensued, we 
experienced the same generous countenance and sympathy 
from the Earl of Malmesbury as we had previously received 
from Lord Clarendon ; and, on the accession of Earl Eussell 
to the high office he has so long filled, we were always fa- 
vored with equally ready attention and the same prompt 
assistance. Thus the conviction was produced that our work 
embodied the principles, not of any one party, but of the 
hearts of the statesmen and of the people of England gen- 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

erally. The Expedition owes great obligations to the Lords 
of the Admiralty for their unvarying readiness to render us 
every assistance in their power; and to the warm-hearted 
and ever-obliging hydrographer to the Admiralty, the late 
Admiral Washington, as a subordinate, but most effective 
agent, our heartfelt gratitude is also due ; and we must ever 
thankfully acknowledge that our efficiency was mainly due 
to the kind services of Admirals Sir Frederick Grey, Sir 
Baldwin Walker, and all the naval officers serving under 
them on the East Coast. Nor must I omit to record our 
obligations to Mr. Skead, K.N. The Luawe was carefully 
sounded and surveyed by this officer, whose skillful and 
zealous labors, both on that river, and afterward on the 
Lower Zambesi, were deserving of all praise. 

In speaking of what has been done by the Expedition, it 
should always be understood that Dr. Kirk, Mr. Charles Liv- 
ingstone, Mr. E. Thornton, and others composed it. In using 
the plural number they are meant, and I wish to bear tes- 
timony to the untiring zeal, energy, courage, and persever- 
ance with which my companions labored, undaunted by dif- 
ficulties, dangers, or hard fare. It is my firm belief that, 
were their services required in any other capacity, they 
might be implicitly relied on to perform their duty like 
men. The reason why Dr. Kirk's name does not appear on 
the title-page of this narrative is because it is hoped that he 
may give an account of the botany and natural history of 
the Expedition in a separate work from his own pen. He 
collected above four thousand species of plants, specimens of 
most of the valuable woods, of the different native manufac- 
tures, of the articles of food, and of the different kinds of 
cotton from every spot we visited, and a great variety of 
birds and insects, besides making meteorological observa- 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

tions, and affording, as our instructions required, medical as- 
sistance to the natives in every case where he could be of 
any use. 

Charles Livingstone was also fully occupied in his duties 
in following out the general objects of our mission, in en- 
couraging the culture of cotton, in making many magnetic 
and meteorological observations, in photographing so long as 
the materials would serve, and in collecting a large number 
of birds, insects, and other objects of interest. The collec- 
tions, being government property, have been forwarded to 
the British Museum and to the Koyal Botanic Gardens at 
Kew ; and, should Dr. Kirk undertake their description, 
three or four years will be required for the purpose. 

Though collections were made, it was always distinctly 
understood that, however desirable these and our explora- 
tions might be, "her majesty's government attached more 
importance to the moral influence that might be exerted on 
the minds of the natives by a well-regulated and orderly 
household of Europeans setting an example of consistent 
moral conduct to all who might witness it ; treating the peo- 
ple with kindness, and relieving their wants, teaching them 
to make experiments in agriculture, explaining to them the 
more simple arts, imparting to them religious instruction as 
far as they are capable of receiving it, and inculcating peace 
and good-will to each other." 

It would be tiresome to enumerate in detail all the little 
acts which were performed by us while following out our in- 
structions. As a rule, whenever the steamer stopped to take 
in wood, or for any other purpose, Dr. Kirk and Charles 
Livingstone went ashore 'to their duties: one of our party, 
who it was intended should navigate the vessel and lay 
down the geographical positions, having failed to answer 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

the expectations formed of him, these duties fell chiefly to 
my share. They involved a considerable amount of night- 
work, in which I was always cheerfully aided by my com- 
panions, and the results were regularly communicated to our 
warm and ever-ready friend, Sir Thomas Maclear, of the 
Eoyal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope. While this work 
was going through the press, we were favored with the 
longitudes of several stations determined from observed oc- 
cupations of stars by the moon, and from eclipses and reap- 
pearances of Jupiter's satellites, by Mr. Mann, the able as- 
sistant to the Cape Astronomer Eoyal ; the lunars are still 
in the hands of Mr. G. W. H. Maclear, of the same Observa- 
tory. In addition to these, the altitudes, variation of the 
compass, latitudes and longitudes, as calculated on the spot, 
appear in the map by Mr. Arrowsmith, and it is hoped may 
not differ much from the results of the same data in abler 
hands. The office of " skipper," which, rather than let the 
Expedition come to a stand, I undertook, required no great 
ability in one " not too old to learn :" it saved a salary, and, 
what was much more valuable than gold, saved the Expedi- 
tion from the drawback of any one thinking that he was in- 
dispensable to its farther progress. The office required at- 
tention to the vessel both at rest and in motion. It also in- 
volved considerable exposure to the sun ; and, to my regret, 
kept me from much anticipated intercourse with the natives, 
and the formation of full vocabularies of their dialects. 

I may add that all wearisome repetitions are as much as 
possible avoided in the narrative ; and, our movements and 
operations having previously been given in a series of dis- 
patches, the attempt is now made to give as fairly as possi- 
ble just what would most strike any person of ordinary in- 
telligence in passing through the country. For the sake of 



INTEODUCTION. 13 

the freshness which usually attaches to first impressions, the 
Journal of Charles Livingstone has been incorporated in the 
narrative; and many remarks made by the natives, which 
he put down at the moment of translation, will convey to 
others the same ideas as they did to ourselves. Some are 
no doubt trivial ; but it is by the little acts and words of 
every-day life that character is truly and best known, and 
doubtless many will prefer to draw their own conclusions 
from them rather than to be schooled by us. 



14 REACH THE COAST. 



CHAPTER I. 

Reach the Coast. — Explore the Eiver Luawe. — Mouths of the Zambesi. — 
Concealed to deceive English Cruisers. — The Deception palmed off on Eu- 
ropean Governments by Ministers in Portugal. — Official Testimony. —Kon- 
gone. — Scenery on the River. — Fertility of Delta Soil. — Colonos or Serfs. — 
Deep Channel of the River. — Land Luggage on Expedition Island. — Coun- 
try in a State of War. — "Free Emigrants." — Atrocities of Mariano. — Meet 
so-called " Rebels." — A Eight between Natives and Portuguese. — An Army 
waiting for Ammunition. — Birds and Beasts met with on the River. — Maza- 
ro. — The Reshipment of Merchandise there for Quillimane. — Shupanga. — 
Zulu Dominion on the right bank of the Zambesi. — Tribute paid by the 
Portuguese. — Senna and Senhor Eerrao. — Seguati or Present. — Hippopot- 
amus Hunters. — Peculiarity of Baobab-trees. — Lupata Gorge. 

The Expedition left England on the 10th of March, 1858, 
in her majesty's colonial steamer "Pearl," commanded by 
Captain Duncan ; and, after enjoying the generous hospital- 
ity of our friends at Cape Town, with the obliging attentions 
of Sir George Grey, and receiving on board Mr. Francis 
Skead, K.N., as surveyor, we reached the East Coast in the 
following May. 

Our first object was to explore the Zambesi, its mouths 
and tributaries, with a view to their being used as highways 
for commerce and Christianity to pass into the vast interior 
of Africa. When we came within five or six miles of the 
land, the yellowish-green tinge of the sea in soundings was 
suddenly succeeded by muddy water with wrack, as of a riv- 
er in flood. The two colors did not intermingle, but the line 
of contact was as sharply defined as when the ocean meets 
the land. It was observed that under the wrack — consisting 



Chap. I. THE RIVER LUAWE. 15 

of reeds, sticks, and leaves — and even under floating cuttle- 
fish bones and Portuguese " men-of-war" (Physalia), numbers 
of small fish screen themselves from the eyes of birds of prey 
and from the rays of the torrid sun. 

The coast is low and covered with mangrove swamps, 
among which are sandy patches clothed with grass, creeping 
plants, and stunted palms. The land trends nearly east and 
west, without any notable feature to guide the navigator, and 
it is difficult to make out the river's mouth ; but the water 
shoals gradually, and each fathom of lessening depth marks 
about a mile. 

We entered the Eiver Luawe first, because its entrance is 
so smooth and deep that the " Pearl," drawing 9 feet 7 inch- 
es, went in without a boat sounding ahead. A small steam 
launch, having been brought out from England in three sec- 
tions on the deck of the "Pearl," was hoisted out and screw- 
ed together at the anchorage, and with her aid the explora- 
tion was commenced. She was called the "Ma Eobert," after 
Mrs. Livingstone, to wliom the natives, according to their cus- 
tom, gave the name Ma (mother) of her eldest son. The har- 
bor is deep, but shut in by mangrove swamps ; and, though 
the water a few miles up is fresh, it is only a tidal river ; for, 
after ascending some seventy miles, it was found to end in 
marshes blocked up with reeds and succulent aquatic plants. 
As the Luawe had been called " West Luabo," it was sup- 
posed to be a branch of the Zambesi, the main stream of 
which is called " Luabo," or " East Luabo." The " Ma Eob- 
ert" and "Pearl" then went to what proved to be a real 
mouth of the river we sought. 

The Zambesi pours its water into the ocean by four 
mouths, namely, the Milambe, which is the most westerly, 
the Kongone, the Luabo, and the Timbwe (or Muselo). 



IQ DECEPTION TO ENGLISH CRUISERS. Chap. I. 

When the river is in flood, a natural canal running parallel 
with the coast, and winding very much among the swamps, 
forms a secret way for conveying slaves from Quill i mane to 
the bays Massangano and Nameara, or to the Zambesi itself. 
The Kwakwa, or Eiver of Quillimane, some sixty miles dis- 
tant from the mouths of the Zambesi, has long been repre- 
sented as the principal entrance to the Zambesi, in order, as 
the Portuguese now maintain, that the English cruisers might 
be induced to watch the false mouth, while slaves were quiet- 
ly shipped from the true one ; and, strange to say, this error 
has lately been propagated by a map issued by the colonial 
minister of Portugal.* 

* Stranger still, the Portuguese official paper, " Aimaes do Conselho Ultra- 
marinho" for 1864 shamelessly asserts that "in that harbor (Kongone), which 
Dr. Livingstone says he discovered, many vessels with slaves have taken refuge 
from the persecutions of English cruisers." This (shall we admit?) was 
known to the Portuguese government! Would any other gentleman in Eu- 
rope construct a map such as that mentioned in the text, and send it to the 
English government as showing the true mouth of the Zambesi ? We did not 
think of printing the following letter from one Portuguese official to another 
in Africa till we saw the poor swagger of the Lisbon official paper, evidently 
intended for other statesmen in Europe. The editor of a Cape paper says : 

"Chevalier Duprat has, by the same opportunity, received a communication 
from the Portuguese governor of Tette, of which the following is a translation : 

" ' Sir — When, in the middle of last year, was delivered to me, by the hands 
of Dr. Livingstone, the letters with which your excellency honored me, under 
date of April of that same year, I was at that moment involved in war with 
the Kafirs of the district of Senna. After this, other works, affairs, and ail- 
ing health prevented me from immediately addressing to your excellency my 
thanks for the kind expressions with which I have been honored by you. 
Your execellncy recommended to me the illustrious Dr. Livingstone. My re- 
lations with this gentleman are so sympathetic that I can never omit rendering 
him the services which he requires, and which are within my reach. Still, my 
wishes are subordinate to my powers, both as an individual and as an author- 
ity. I am aware how profitable to geographical knowledge and science are 
the explorations of the doctor, as well as to the prosperity of this country — as 
rich as neglected. I sincerely hope it will be in my power to help him as I 
could wish. Nevertheless, I assure your excellency that I will serve him as 
far as lies in my power. It is said that our government is about to establish a 
post at the bar of Luabo, and from there to carry on direct navigation to this 



Chap. I. OFFICIAL TESTIMONY. 17 

After the examination of three branches by the able and 
energetic surveyor, Francis Skead, K.N, the Kongone was 
found to be the best entrance. The immense amount of 
sand brought down by the Zambesi in the course of ages 
formed a sort of promontory, against which the long swell 
of the Indian Ocean, beating during the prevailing winds, 
has formed bars, which, acting against the waters of the del- 
ta, may have led to their exit sideways. The Kongone is 
one of these lateral branches, and the safest ; inasmuch as 
the bar has nearly two fathoms on it at low water, and the 
rise at spring tides is from twelve to fourteen feet. The bar 
is narrow, the passage nearly straight, and, were it buoyed 
and a beacon placed on Pearl Island, would always be safe 
to a steamer. When the wind is from the east or north, 
the bar is smooth ; if from the south and southeast, it has a 
heavy break on it, and is not to be attempted in boats. A 
strong current setting to the east when the tide is flowing, 
and to the west when ebbing, may drag a boat or ship into 
the breakers. If one is doubtful of his longitude and runs 
east, he will soon see the land at Timbwe disappear away to 
the north ; and coming west again, he can easily make out 
East Luabo from its great size ; and Kongone follows seven 

district. Should this take place, great advantages will result to this country, 
and to Livingstone's great glory, because he was the first who passed over from 
the sea by this way of communication. I thank your excellency for the news- 
papers with which you furnished me. I appreciate them as articles which very 
seldom appear here. Your excellency also obliged me with some seeds ; but, 
unfortunately, I was at Mozambique, and having planted them this year, they 
produced little ; I fear they were already old. My capability for service is very 
limited, but if your excellency thinks that I can be of any use, I shall be most 
gratified. I have, etc., Tito A. r>'A. Sicard, Governor of Tette. 

""Tette, July 9,1859.' 

"These letters were brought to Natal by H. M.'s brig 'Persian,' which had 
cnlled there from Mozambique for supplies, and were put on board the ' Wal- 
densian' as she steamed out." 

B 



18 THE KONGONE. Chap. I. 

miles west. East Luabo has a good but long bar, and not 
to be attempted unless the wind be northeast or east. It 
has sometimes been called "Barra Catrina," and was used in 
the embarkations of slaves. This may have been the "Kiv- 
er of Good Signs" of Yasco da Grama, as the mouth is more 
easily seen from the seaward than any other; but the ab- 
sence of the pillar dedicated by that navigator to " St. Ka- 
phael" leaves the matter in doubt. No Portuguese live 
within eighty miles of any mouth of the Zambesi. The 
names given by the natives refer more to the land on each 
side than to the streams ; thus, one side of the Kongone is 
ISTyamisenga, the other Nyangalule ; and Kongone, the name 
of a fish, is applied to one side of the natural canal which 
leads into the Zambesi proper, or Cuama, and gives the port 
its value. 

When a native of the temperate North first lands in the 
tropics, his feelings and emotions resemble in some respects 
those which the First Man may have had on his entrance 
into the Garden of Eden. He has set foot in a new world — 
another state of existence is before him ; every thing he sees, 
every sound that falls upon the ear, has all the freshness and 
charm of novelty. The trees and the plants are new, the 
flowers and the fruits, the beasts, the birds, and the insects 
are curious and strange ; the very sky itself is new, glowing 
with colors, or sparkling with constellations, never seen in 
northern climes. 

The Kongone is five miles east of the Milambe, or western 
branch, and seven miles west from East Luabo, which again 
is five miles from the Timbwe. We saw but few natives, 
and these, by escaping from their canoes into the mangrove 
thickets the moment they caught sight of us, gave unmistak- 
able indications that they had no very favorable opinion of 




PANDANUS OK SCREW PALM, COVERED WITH CLIMBING PLANTS, NEAR THE 
KONGONE CANAL OF THE ZAMBESI. 



Chap. I. SCENERY ON THE KONGONE. 21 

white men. They were probably fugitives from Portu- 
guese slavery. In the grassy glades, buffaloes, warthogs, 
and three kinds of antelope were abundant, and the latter 
easily obtained. A few hours' hunting usually provided 
venison enough for a score of men for several days. 

On proceeding up the Kongone branch it was found that, 
by keeping well in the bends, which the current had worn 
deep, shoals were easily avoided. The first twenty miles are 
straight and deep ; then a small and rather tortuous natural 
canal leads off to the right, and, after about five miles, dur- 
ing which the paddles almost touched the floating grass of 
the sides, ends in the broad Zambesi. The rest of the Kon- 
gone branch comes out of the main stream considerably 
higher up as the outgoing branch called Doto. 

The first twenty miles of the Kongone are inclosed in 
mangrove jungle; some of the trees are ornamented with 
orchilla weed, which appears never to have been gathered. 
Huge ferns, palm bushes, and occasionally wild date-palms, 
peer out in the forest, which consists of different species of 
mangroves ; the bunches of bright yellow, though scarcely 
edible fruit, contrasting prettily with the graceful green 
leaves. In some spots the Milola, an umbrageous hibiscus, 
with large yellowish flowers, grows in masses along the 
bank. Its bark is made into cordage, and is especially valua- 
ble for the manufacture of ropes attached to harpoons for kill- 
ing the hippopotamus. The Pandanus or screw-palm, from 
which sugar-bags are made in the Mauritius, also appears, 
and, on coming out of the canal into the Zambesi, many are 
so tall as in the distance to remind us of the steeples of our 
native land, and make us relish the remark of an old sailor, 
"that but one thing was wanting to complete the picture, 
and that was 'a grog-shop near the church.'" We find also 



22 FERTILITY OF SOIL. Chap. I. 

a few guava and lime-trees growing wild, but the natives 
claim the crops. The dark woods resound with the lively 
and exultant song of the kinghunter {Halcyon striolata) as 
he sits perched on high among the trees. As the steamer 
moves on through the winding channel, a pretty little heron 
or bright kingfisher darts out in alarm from the edge of the 
bank, flies on ahead a short distance, and settles quietly 
down, to be again frightened off in a few seconds as we ap- 
proach. The magnificent fishhawk (Halietus vocifer) sits on 
the top of a mangrove-tree, digesting his morning meal of 
fresh fish, and is clearly unwilling to stir until the immi- 
nence of the danger compels him at last to spread his great 
wings for flight. The glossy ibis, acute of ear to a remarka- 
ble degree, hears from afar the unwonted sound of the pad- 
dles, and, springing from the mud where his family has been 
quietly feasting, is off, screaming out his loud, harsh, and de- 
fiant Ha ! ha ! ha ! long before the danger is near. 

The mangroves are now left behind, and are succeeded by 
vast level plains of rich dark soil, covered with gigantic 
grasses, so tall that they tower over one's head, and render 
hunting impossible. Beginning in July, the grass is burned 
off every year after it has become dry. These fires prevent 
the growth of any great amount of timber, as only a few 
trees from among the more hardy kinds, such as the Boras- 
sus palm and lignum-vitas, can live through the sea of fire 
which annually roars across the plains. 

Several native huts now peep out from the bananas and 
cocoa-palms on the right bank ; they stand on piles a few 
feet above the low, damp ground, and their owners enter 
them by means of ladders. The soil is wonderfully rich, and 
the gardens are really excellent. Kice is cultivated largely ; 
sweet potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes, cabbages, onions (sha- 



Chap. I. " COLONOS," OE SERFS. 23 

lots), peas, a little cotton, and sugar-cane are also raised. It 
is said that English potatoes, when planted at Quillimane on 
soil resembling this, in the course of two years become in 
taste like sweet potatoes (Convolvulus batatas), and are like 
our potato frosted. The whole of the fertile region extend- 
ing from the Kongone Canal to beyond Mazaro, some eighty 
miles in length and fifty in breadth, is admirably adapted for 
the growth of sugar-cane ; and, were it in the hands of our 
friends at the Cape, would supply all Europe with sugar. 
The remarkably few people seen appeared to be tolerably 
well fed, but there was a shivering dearth of clothing among 
them; all were blacks, and nearly all Portuguese "colo- 
nos" or serfs. They manifested no fear of white men, and 
stood in groups on the bank gazing in astonishment at the 
steamers, especially at the " Pearl," which accompanied us 
thus far up the river. One old man who came on board 
remarked that never before had he seen any vessel so large 
as the "Pearl;" it was like a village; "was it made out of 
one tree?" All were eager traders, and soon came off to 
the ship in light, swift canoes, with every kind of fruit 
and food they possessed ; a few brought honey and bees- 
wax, which are found in quantities in the mangrove forests. 
As the ships steamed off, many anxious sellers ran along 
the bank, holding up fowls, baskets of rice and meal, and 
shouting " Malonda, Malonda," " things for sale," while oth- 
ers followed in canoes, which they sent through the water 
with great velocity by means of short, broad-bladed pad- 
dles. 

The deep channel, or Qwete as the canoe-men call it, of 
the Zambesi is winding, and narrow when contrasted with 
the great breadth of the river itself. The river bottom 
appears to be a succession of immense submerged sand- 



24 DEEP CHANNEL OF RIVER. Chap. I. 

banks, having, when the stream is low, from one to four 
feet of water on them. The main channel runs for some 
distance between the sand-bank and the river's bank, with 
a depth in the dry season varying from five to fifteen feet, 
and a current of nearly two knots an hour. It then turns 
and flows along the lower edge of the sand-bank in a diag- 
onal direction across the river, and continues this process, 
winding from bank to bank repeatedly during the day's 
sail, making expert navigators on the ocean feel helplessly 
at sea on the river. On these crossings the channel is shal- 
lowest. It is, in general, pretty clearly defined. In calm 
weather there is a peculiar boiling up of its water from some 
action below. With a light breeze the Qwete assumes a 
characteristic ripple, and when the wind freshens and blows 
up the river, as it usually does from May to November, the 
waves on it are larger than those of other parts of the river, 
and a line of small breakers marks the edge of the shoal- 
bank above. 

Finding the " Pearl's" draught too gr,eat for that part 
of the river near the island of Simbo, where the branch 
called the Doto is given off to the Kongone on the right 
bank, and another named Chinde departs to the secret 
canal already mentioned on the left, the goods belonging 
to the expedition were taken out of her, and placed on 
one of the grassy islands about forty miles from the bar. 
The " Pearl" then left us, and we had to part with our good 
friends Duncan and Skead ; the former to Ceylon, the lat- 
ter to return to his duties as government surveyor at the 
Cape. 

Of those who eventually did the work of the expedition 
the majority took a sober common-sense view of the enter- 
prise in which we were engaged. Some remained on Ex- 



Chap. I. EXPEDITION ISLAND. 25 

pedition Island from the 18th of June until the 13th of Au- 
gust, while the launch and pinnace were carrying the goods 
up to Shupanga and Senna. The country was in a state of 
war, our luggage was in danger, and several of our party 
were exposed to disease from inactivity in the malaria of the 
Delta. Here some had their first introduction to African life 
and African fever. Those alone were safe who were active- 
ly employed with the vessels, and of course, remembering the 
perilous position of their fellows, they strained every nerve 
to finish the work and take them away. This was the time, 
too, for the feeble-minded to make a demand for their Sun- 
days of rest and full meal-hours, which even our crew of 
twelve Kroomen, though tampered with, had more sense and 
good feeling than to indorse. It is a pity that some people 
can not see that the true and honest discharge of the com- 
mon duties of every-day life is Divine service. 

The weather was delightful, with only an occasional show- 
er or cold foggy morning. Those who remained on the isl- 
and made the most of their time, taking meteorological and 
magnetical observations, and botanizing, ao far as the dried 
vegetation would allow. No one seemed to place much re- 
liance on the "official report" of two naval commanders, who 
now, -after about a fortnight's experience in the Zambesi, 
solemnly declared it to be " more like an inland sea than a 
river, with a climate like that of Italy, and infinitely more 
healthy than any river on the West Coast ;" but, by the lead- 
er's advice, each began to examine and to record his obser- 
vations for himself, and did not take even his chief's previ- 
ous experience as infallible. 

Large columns of smoke rose daily from different points 
of the horizon, showing that the natives were burning off the 
immense crops of tall grass, here a nuisance, however valua- 



26 BURNING OFF THE GRASS. Chap. L 

ble elsewhere. A white cloud was often observed to rest on 
the head of the column, as if a current of hot damp air was 
sent up by the heat of the flames, and its moisture was con- 
densed at the top. Rain did not follow, though theorists 
have imagined that in such cases it ought. 

Large game, buffaloes, and zebras, were abundant abreast 
the island, but no men could be seen. On the main land, 
over on the right bank of the river, we were amused by the 
eccentric gyrations and evolutions of flocks of small seed- 
eating birds, who in their flight wheeled into compact col'- 
umns with such military precision as to give us the impres- 
sion that they must be guided by a leader, and all directed 
by the same signal. Several other kinds of small birds now 
go in flocks, and, among others, the large Senegal swallow. 
The presence of this bird, being clearly in a state of migra- 
tion from the North, while the common swallow of the coun- 
try and the brown kite are away beyond the equator, leads 
to the conjecture that there may be a double migration, 
namely, of birds from torrid climates to the more temperate, 
as this now is, as well as from severe winters to sunny re- 
gions ; but this could not be verified by such birds of pas- 
sage as ourselves. 

On reaching Mazaro, the mouth of a narrow creek which 
in floods communicates with the Quillimane River, we found 
that the Portuguese were at war with a half-caste named 
Mariauo, alias Matakenya, from whom they had generally 
fled, and who, having built a stockade near the mouth of the 
Shire, owned all the country between that river and Mazaro. 
Mariano was best known by his native name Matakenya, 
which in their tongue means "trembling," or quivering as 
trees do in a storm. He was a keen slave-hunter, and kept 
a large number of men, well armed with muskets. It is an 



Chap. I. ATROCITIES OF MARIANO. 27 

entire mistake to suppose that the slave-trade is one of buy- 
ing and selling alone, or that engagements can be made with 
laborers in Africa as they are in India ; Mariano, like other 
Portuguese, had no labor to spare. He had been in the 
habit of sending out armed parties on slave hunting-forays 
among the helpless tribes to the northeast, and carrying 
down the kidnapped victims in chains to Quillimane, where 
they were sold by his brother-in-law Cruz Coimbra, and 
shipped as " Free emigrants" to the French island of Bour- 
bon. So long as his robberies and murders were restricted 
to the natives at a distance, the authorities did not interfere ; 
but his men, trained to deeds of violence and bloodshed in 
their slave forays, naturally began to practice on the people 
nearer at hand, though belonging to the Portuguese, and 
even in the village of Senna, under the guns of the fort. A 
gentleman of the highest standing told us that, while at din- 
ner with his family, it was no uncommon event for a slave to 
rush into the room pursued by one of Mariano's men with 
spear in hand to murder him. 

The atrocities of this villain, aptly termed by the late 
governor of Quillimane a " notorious robber and murderer," 
became at length intolerable. All the Portuguese spoke of 
him as a rare monster of inhumanity. It is unaccountable 
why half-castes, such as he, are so much more cruel than the 
Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case. 

It was asserted that one of his favorite modes of creating 
an impression in the country, and making his name dreaded, 
was to spear his captives with his own hands. On one occa- 
sion he is reported to have thus killed forty poor wretches 
placed in a row before him. We did not at first credit these 
statements, and thought that they were merely exaggerations 
of the incensed Portuguese, who naturally enough were ex- 



28 CONTACT WITH THE " REBELS." Chap. I. 

asperated with him for stopping their trade and harboring 
their runaway slaves ; but we learned afterward from the 
natives that the accounts given ais by the Portuguese had 
not exceeded the truth, and that Mariano was quite as great 
a ruffian as they had described him. One expects slave- 
owners to treat their human chattels as well as men do other 
animals of value, but the slave-trade seems always to engen- 
der an unreasoning ferocity, if not bloodthirstiness. 

"War was declared against Mariano, and a force sent to 
take him ; he resisted for a time, but, seeing that he was 
likely to get the worst of it, and knowing that the Portu- 
guese governors have small salaries, and are therefore " dis- 
posed to be reasonable," he went down to Quillimane to 
"arrange" with the governor, as it is termed here; but Col- 
onel da Silva put him in prison, and then sent him for trial 
to Mozambique. When we came into the country his peo- 
ple were fighting under his brother Bonga. The war had 
lasted six months, and stopped all trade on the river during 
that period. On the loth of June we first came into con- 
tact with the "rebels." They appeared as a crowd of well- 
armed and fantastically-dressed people under the trees at 
Mazaro. On explaining that we were English, some at once 
came on board and called to those on shore to lay aside their 
arms. On landing among them we saw that many had the 
branded marks of slaves on their chests, but they warmly 
approved our objects, and knew well the distinctive charac- 
ter of our nation on the slave question. The shout at our 
departure contrasted strongly with the suspicious question- 
ing on our approach. Henceforth we were recognized as 
friends by both parties. 

At a later period we were taking in wood within a mile 
of the scene of action, but a dense fog prevented our hearing 



Chap. I. FIGHT BETWEEN NATIVES AND PORTUGUESE. 29 

the noise of a battle at Mazaro ; and on arriving there im- 
mediately after, many natives and Portuguese appeared on 
the bank. 

Dr. Livingstone, landing to salute some of his old friends 
among the latter, found himself in the sickening smell and 
among the mutilated bodies of the slain ; he was request- 
ed to take the governor, who was very ill of fever, across 
to Shupanga, and just as he gave his assent, the rebels re- 
newed the fight, and the balls began to whistle about in all 
directions. After trying in vain to get some one to assist 
the governor down to the steamer, and unwilling to leave 
him in such danger, as the officer sent to bring our Kroo- 
men did not appear, he went into the hut, and dragged along 
his excellency to the ship. He was a very tall man, and as 
he swayed hither and thither from weakness, weighing down 
Dr. Livingstone, it must have appeared like one drunken 
man helping another. Some of the Portuguese white sol- 
diers stood fighting with great bravery against the enemy in 
front, while a few were coolly shooting at their own slaves 
for fleeing into the river behind. The rebels soon retired, 
and the Portuguese escaped to a sand-bank in the Zambesi, 
and thence to an island opposite Shupanga, where they lay 
for some weeks, looking at the rebels on the main land op- 
posite. This state of inactivity on the part of the Portu- 
guese could not well be helped, as they had expended all 
their ammunition and were waiting anxiously for supplies ; 
hoping, no doubt, sincerely that the enemy might not hear 
that their powder had failed. Luckily, their hopes were not 
disappointed ; the rebels waited until a supply came, and 
were then repulsed after a three and a half hours' hard 
fighting. Two months afterward Mariano's stockade was 
burned, the garrison having fled in a panic ; and as Bonga 



30 UNINTERESTING SCENERY. Chap. I. 

declared that lie did not wish to fight with this governor, 
with whom he had no quarrel, the war soon came to an end. 
His excellency meanwhile, being a disciple of Easpail, had 
taken nothing for the fever but a little camphor, and after 
he was taken to Shupanga became comatose. More potent 
remedies were administered to him, to his intense disgust, 
and he soon recovered. The colonel in attendance, whom 
he never afterward forgave, encouraged the treatment. 
"Give what is right; never mind him; he is very (muito) 
impertinent;" and all night long, with every draught of 
water, the colonel gave a quantity of quinine : the conse- 
quence was, next morning the patient, was cinchonized and 
better. ' The sketch opposite represents the scene of action, 
and is interesting in an historical point of view, because the 
opening in which a large old canoe, with a hole in its bot- 
tom, is seen lying on its side, is the mouth of the creek 
Mutu, which in 1861 appeared in a map published by the 
Portuguese " Minister of Marine and the Colonies" as that 
through which the chief portion of the Zambesi, here about 
a mile wide, flowed to Quillimane. In reality, this creek, 
eight or ten yards wide, is filled with grass, and its bed is 
six feet or more above the level of the Zambesi. The side 
of the creek opposite to the canoe is seen in the right of the 
picture, and sloping down from the bed to one of the dead 
bodies may be marked the successive heights at which the 
water of the main stream stood from flood-time in March to 
its medium height in June. 

For sixty or seventy miles before reaching Mazaro the 
scenery is tame and uninteresting. On either hand is a 
dreary uninhabited expanse, of the same level grassy plains, 
with merely a few trees to relieve the painful monotony. 
The round green top of the stately palm-tree looks at a 



Chap. I. BIRDS AND BEASTS ON RIVER. 33 

distance, when its gray trunk can not be seen, as though 
hung in mid-air. Many flocks of busy sand-martins, which 
here, and as far south as the Orange Eiver, do not migrate, 
have perforated the banks two or three feet horizontally, in 
order to place their nests at the ends, and are now chasing 
on restless wing the myriads of tropical insects. The broad 
river has many low islands, on which are seen various kinds 
of water-fowl, such as geese, spoonbills, herons, and flamin- 
goes. Repulsive crocodiles, as with open jaws they sleep 
and bask in the sun on the low banks, soon catch the sound 
of the revolving paddles and glide quietly into the stream. 
The hippopotamus, having selected some still reach of the 
river to spend the day, rises from the bottom, where he has 
been enjoying his morning bath after the labors of the night 
on shore, blows a puff of spray out of his nostrils, shakes the 
water out of his ears, puts his enormous snout up straight 
and yawns, sounding a loud alarm to the rest of the herd, 
with notes as of a monster bassoon. 

As we approach Mazaro the scenery improves. We see 
the well-wooded Shupanga ridge stretching to the left, and 
in front blue hills rise dimly far in the distance. There is 
no trade whatever on the Zambesi below Mazaro. All the 
merchandise of Senna and Tette is brought to that point in 
large canoes, and thence carried six miles across the coun- 
try on men's heads to be reshipped on a small stream that 
flows into the Kwakwa, or Quillimane River, which is en- 
tirely distinct from the Zambesi. Only on rare occasions 
and during the highest floods can canoes pass from the Zam- 
besi to the Quillimane River through the narrow natural 
canal Mutu. The natives of Maruru, or the country around 
Mazaro, the word Mazaro meaning the " mouth of the creek" 
Mutu, have a bad name among the Portuguese : they are 



34 BURDEN OF TRIBUTE. Chap. I. 

said to be expert thieves, and the merchants sometimes 
suffer from their adroitness while the goods are in transit 
from one river to the other. In general they are trained 
canoe-men, and man many of the canoes that ply thence 
to Senna and Tette; their pay is small, and, not trusting 
the traders, they must always have it before they start. 
Africans being prone to assign plausible reasons for their 
conduct, like white men in more enlightened lands, it is 
possible they may be good-humoredly giving their reason 
for insisting on being invariably paid in advance in the 
words of their favorite canoe-song, " Uachingere, Uachingere 
Kale," "You cheated me of old;" or, "Thou art slippery, 
slippery truly." 

The Landeens or Zulus are lords of the right bank of 
the Zambesi ; and the Portuguese, by paying this fighting 
tribe a pretty heavy annual tribute, practically admit this. 
Eegularly every year come the Zulus in force to Senna and 
Shupanga for their accustomed tribute. The few wealthy 
merchants of Senna groan under the burden, for it falls 
chiefly on them. They submit to pay annually 200 pieces 
of cloth, of sixteen yards each, besides beads and brass wire, 
knowing that refusal involves war, which might end in the 
loss of all they possess. The Zulus appear to keep as sharp 
a look-out on the Senna and Shupanga people as ever land- 
lord did on tenant ; the more they cultivate, the more tribute 
they have to pay. On asking some of them why they did 
not endeavor to raise certain highly profitable products, we 
were answered, "What's the use of our cultivating any more 
than we do ? the Landeens would only come down on us for 
more tribute." 

In the forests of Shupanga the Mokundu-kundu tree 
abounds; its bright yellow wood makes good boat-masts, 



Chap. I. SHUPANGA. 35 

and yields a strong bitter medicine for fever; the Grunda- 
tree attains an immense size ; its timber is hard, rather cross- 
grained, with masses of silica deposited in its substance ; the 
large canoes, capable of carrying three or four tons, are 
made of its wood. For permission to cut these trees, a Port- 
uguese gentleman of Quillimane was paying the Zulus, in 
1858, two hundred dollars a year, and his successor now 
pays three hundred. 

At Shupanga, a one-storied stone house stands on the 
prettiest site on the river. In front, a sloping lawn, with a 
fine mango orchard at its southern end, leads down to the 
broad Zambesi, whose green islands repose on the sunny 
bosom of the tranquil waters. Beyond, northward, lie vast 
fields and forests of palms and tropical trees, with the mass- 
ive mountain of Morambala towering amid the white clouds ; 
and farther away more distant hills appear in the blue hor- 
izon. This beautifully situated house possesses a melan- 
choly interest from having been associated in a most mourn- 
ful manner with the history of two English expeditions. 
Here, in 1826, poor Kirkpatrick, of Captain Owen's Survey- 
ing Expedition, died of fever; and here, in 1862, died, of 
the same fatal disease, the beloved wife of Dr. Livingstone. 
A hundred yards east of the house, under a large Baobab- 
tree, far from their native land, both are buried. 

The Shupanga house was the head-quarters of the govern- 
or during the Mariano war. He told us that the province 
of Mozambique costs the Home Government between £5000 
and £6000 annually, and East Africa yields no reward in 
return to the mother country. We met there several other 
influential Portuguese. All seemed friendly, and expressed 
their willingness to assist the expedition in every way in 
their power; and better still, Colonel JSTunes and Major Si- 



36 SERVICES OF DR. KIRK. Chap. I. 

card put their good-will into action by cutting wood for the 
steamer and sending men to help in unloading. It was ob- 
servable that not one of them knew any thing about the 
Kongone Mouth ; all thought that we had come in by the 
" Barra Catrina," or East Luabo.* Dr. Kirk remained here 
a few weeks ; and, besides exploring a small lake twenty 
miles to the southwest, had the sole medical care of the 
sick and wounded soldiers, for which valuable services he 
received the thanks of the Portuguese government. We 
wooded up at this place with African ebony or black wood, 
and lignum- vitse ; the latter tree attains an immense size, 
sometimes as much as four feet in diameter. Our engineer, 
knowing what ebony and lignum-vitae cost at home, said it 
made his heart sore to burn woods so valuable. Though 
botanically different, they are extremely alike; the black 
wood, as grown in some districts, is superior, and the lignum- 
vitse inferior in quality to these timbers brought from other 
countries. Caoutchouc, or India-rubber, is found in abund- 
ance inland from Shupanga house, and calumba root is plen- 
tiful in the district; indigo, in quantities, propagates itself 
close to the banks of the river, and was probably at some 
time cultivated, for manufactured indigo was once exported. 
The India-rubber is made into balls for a game resembling 
"fives," and calumba root is said to be used as a mordant 
for certain colors, but not as a dye itself. 

We started for Tette on the 17th of August, 1858 ; the 

* The reason of their want of knowledge — in which, notwithstanding the 
tone subsequently assumed in official papers, the government at Lisbon un- 
questionably shared — was probably, as we conjecture, its recent formation. 
During the period of our acquaintance with the Kongone, about eighty yards 
were washed away on one side and deposited on the other. A navigable chan- 
nel by Nyangalule was quite filled up, and Pearl Island nearly all washed 
away. As nothing whatever is done to preserve the channel, it will soon be 
as shallow as the Milambe, and entirely useless for navigation. 



Chap. I. JOURNEY TO TETTE. 37 

navigation was rather difficult, the Zambesi from Shupanga 
to Senna being wide and full of islands ; our black pilot, 
John Scissors, a serf, sometimes took the wrong channel and 
ran us aground. Nothing abashed, he would exclaim in an 
aggrieved tone, "This is not the path; it is back yonder." 
11 Then why didn't you go yonder at first?" growled out our 
Kroomen, who had the work of getting the vessel off. When 
they spoke roughly to poor Scissors, the weak, cringing slave- 
spirit came forth in, " Those men scold me so, I am ready 
to run away." This mode of finishing up an engagement is 
not at all uncommon on the Zambesi ; several cases occurred, 
when we were on the river, of hired crews decamping with 
most of the goods in their charge. If the trader can not re- 
dress his own wrongs, he has to endure them. The Landeens 
will not surrender a fugitive slave, even to his master. One 
belonging to Mr. Azevedo fled, and was, as a great favor 
only, returned after a present of much more than his value. 

Our steamer's badly - constructed furnaces consumed a 
frightful amount of wood. Fires were lighted at two in 
the morning, but steam was seldom up before six. A 
great deal of time was lost in wood-cutting. The large, 
heavy-laden country canoes could nearly keep up with us, 
and the small ones shot ahead, and the paddlers looked 
back in wonder and pity at the slow puffing " Asthmatic." 
For us, steam was no labor-saving power; boats, or canoes 
even, would have done for the expedition all that it did, 
with half the toil and expense. 

We landed to wood at Shamoara, just below the confluence 
of the Shire. Its quartz hills are covered with trees and 
gigantic grasses ; the buaze, a small forest-tree, grows abund- 
antly ; it is a species of polygala ; its beautiful clusters of 
sWeet - scented pinkish flowers perfume the air with a rich 



38 FRIENDLINESS OF BONGA. Chap. I. 

fragrance ; its seeds produce a fine drying oil, and the bark 
of the smaller branches yields a fibre finer and stronger 
than flax, with which the natives make their nets for fish- 
ing. Bonga, the brother of the rebel Mariano, and now at 
the head of the revolted natives, with some of his principal 
men, came to see us, and were perfectly friendly, though 
told of our having carried the sick governor across to Shu- 
panga, and of our having cured him of fever. On our 
acquainting Bonga with the object of the expedition, he 
remarked that we should suffer no hinderance from his 
people in our good work. He sent us a present of rice, 
two sheep, and a quantity of fire-wood. He never tried 
to make any use of us in the strife ; the other side showed 
less confidence by carefully cross - questioning our pilot 
whether we had sold any powder to the enemy. We man- 
aged, however, to keep on good terms with both rebels and 
Portuguese. 

Being unable to take the steamer up the shoal channel 
along which Senna stands, we anchored at Nyaruka, a small 
hamlet of blacks, six miles below, and walked up to Senna 
next morning. The narrow winding footpath, along which 
we had to march in Indian file, lay through gardens and 
patches of wood, the loftiest trees being thorny acacias. 
The sky was cloudy, the air cool and pleasant, and the 
little birds, in the gladness of their hearts, poured forth 
sweet strange songs, which, though equal to those of the 
singing birds at home on a spring morning, yet seemed, 
somehow, as if in a foreign tongue. "We met many natives 
on the road. Most of the men were armed with spears, 
bows and arrows, or old Tower muskets; the women had 
short-handled iron hoes, and were going to work in the gar- 
dens; they stepped aside to let us pass, and saluted us po- 



Chap. I. DESCRIPTION OF SENNA. 39 

litely, the men bowing and scraping, and the women, even 
with heavy loads on their heads, courtesying — a courtesy 
from bare legs is startling ! 

Senna is built on a low plain, on the right bank of the 
Zambesi, with some pretty detached hills in the back- 
ground ; it is surrounded by a stockade of living trees to 
protect its inhabitants from their troublesome and rebel- 
lious neighbors. It contains a few large houses, some ruins 
of others, and a weatherbeaten cross, where once stood a 
church ; a mound shows the site of an ancient monastery, 
and a mud fort by the river is so dilapidated that cows were 
grazing peacefully over its prostrate walls. This grieves not 
the villagers, for its black garrison was wont to keep within 
doors when the foe came near, leaving the merchants to 
settle the strife as best they could; and they therefore con- 
sider that the decay of the fort has not caused them to be 
any more helpless than they were before. 

The few Senna merchants, having little or no trade in the 
village, send parties of trusted slaves into the interior to hunt 
for and purchase ivory. It is a dull place, and very condu- 
cive to sleep. One is sure to take fever in Senna on the 
second day, if by chance one escapes it on the first day of a 
sojourn there; but no place is entirely bad. Senna has one 
redeeming feature : it is the native village of the large-heart- 
ed and hospitable Senhor H. A. Ferrao. The benevolence 
of this gentleman is unbounded. The poor black stranger 
passing through the town goes to him almost as a matter of 
course for food, and is never sent away hungry. In times 
of famine the starving natives are fed by his generosity ; 
hundreds of his own people he never sees except on these 
occasions ; and the only benefit derived from being their 
master is, that they lean on him as a patriarchal chief, and 



40 INDUSTRY OF THE NATIVES. Chap. I. 

he has the satisfaction of settling their differences, and of 
saving their lives in seasons of drought and scarcity. His 
father, a man of superior attainments, was formerly the Port- 
uguese governor of Senna, and acquired a vast tract of rich 
country to the southward, called Chiringoma, in a most hon- 
orable manner; but the government ordered it to be split 
up, and reserved two leagues only for the heir, apportion- 
ing the rest in free grants to emigrants ; the reason assigned 
for the robbery was that "it would never do for a subject to 
possess more land than the crown of Portugal." The Lan- 
deens soon followed, took possession of the whole, and 
spoiled the spoilers. 

Senhor Ferrao received us with his usual kindness, and 
gave us a bountiful breakfast. During the day the principal 
men of the place called, and were unanimously of opinion 
that the free natives would willingly cultivate large quanti- 
ties of cotton, could they find purchasers. They had in for- 
mer times exported largely both cotton and cloth to Manica 
and even to Brazil. "On their own soil," they declared, 
" the natives are willing to labor and trade, provided only 
they can do so to advantage : when it is for their interest, 
blacks work very hard." We often remarked subsequently 
that this was the opinion of men of energy ; and that all 
settlers of activity, enterprise, and sober habits had become 
rich, while those who were much addicted to lying on their 
backs smoking invariably complained of the laziness of the 
negroes, and were poor, proud, and despicable. We dined 
with another very honorable Portuguese, Major Tito A. 
d'A. Sicard, who quoted the common remark that Dr. Liv- 
ingstone's discovery of the Kongone Bar had ruined Quilli- 
mane ; for the government had proposed to abandon that fe- 
ver-haunted locality, and to found a new town at the mouth 



ISLAND OF PITA. 43 

of the Kongone. It was not then known that householders 
in the old village preferred to resign all offices rather than 
remove. The major had a great desire to assist Dr. Living- 
stone in his enterprise ; and said that when the war was 
past he would at once take up his goods to Tette in canoes ; 
and this he afterward most generously did. While return- 
ing to Nyaruka, we heard a bird like a nightingale pouring 
forth its sweet melody in the stillness of the evening. 

A picturesque range of lofty hills commences on the left 
bank opposite Senna, and runs in a northerly direction, near- 
ly parallel with the river. Here we first fell in with that 
fine antelope, the koodoo {Antelope strepsiceros). Some miles 
above Senna is the island of Pita, with a considerable native 
population, which appeared to be well off for food. A half- 
caste, claiming to be the head man, came on board, and gave 
us a few ears of green maize as a "seguati." This is not an 
ordinary present, but a very small gift, which is to win back 
to the donor at least twice its value. When a stingy native 
has a tough little fowl, or a few ears of Indian corn, the value 
of which is hardly appreciable — as a dozen of their best fowls 
only cost two yards of cloth (once threepence a yard), and a 
basket of maize but half a yard — he forms it into a "seguati," 
his heart overflowing with that gratitude once described as a 
lively sense of favors to come, and is rather disappointed if 
he does not get twice the value in return. We soon learned 
to dislike " seguati" from common people, but it was in vain 
to say to the shrewd African, " Sell it ; we will buy it." 
" Oh no, sir, it is a seguati ; it is not for sale," was the inva- 
riable reply. As it is understood to be a compliment, we 
always submitted to this customary politeness from head 
men. To have done otherwise would have seemed to our- 
selves like ungracious manners from the rich and exalted to 



44 



HIPPOPOTAMUS HUNTERS. 



Chap. I. 



the poor and lowly, 
we declined. 



3g> 



sometimes with 



When private persons attempted it, 

Beyond Pita lies the little island 
Nyamotobsi, where we met a small 
fugitive tribe of hippopotamus hunt- 
ers, who had been driven by war 
from their own island in front. All 
were busy at work ; some were 
making gigantic baskets for grain, 
the men plaiting from the inside. 
With the civility so common among 
them, the chief ordered a mat to be 
spread for us under a shed, and then 
showed us the weapon with which 
they kill the hippopotamus; it is a 
short iron harpoon inserted in the 
end of a long pole, but being in- 
tended to unship, it is made fast to 
a strong cord of milola, or hibiscus 
bark, which is wound closely round 
the entire length of the shaft, and 
secured at its opposite end. Two 
men in a swift canoe steal quietly 
down on the sleeping animal. The 
bowman dashes the harpoon into 
the unconscious victim, while the 
quick steersman sweeps the light 
craft back with his broad paddle ; 
the force of the blow separates the 
harpoon from its corded handle, 
which, appearing on the surface, 
inflated bladder attached, guides the 



Chap. I. HUNTING EXPEDITION. 45 

hunters to where the wounded beast hides below until they 
dispatch it. 

These hippopotamus hunters form a separate people, call- 
ed Akombwi, or Mapodzo, and rarely — the women, it is said, 
never — intermarry with any other tribe. The reason for 
their keeping aloof from certain of the natives on the Zam- 
besi is obvious enough, some having as great an abhorrence 
of hippopotamus meat as Mohammedans have of swine's 
flesh. Our pilot, Scissors, was one of this class ; he would 
not even cook his food in a pot which had contained hippo- 
potamus meat, preferring to go hungry till he could find 
another ; and yet he traded eagerly in the animal's tusks, 
and ate with great relish the flesh of the foul-feeding mara- 
bout. These hunters go out frequently on long expeditions, 
taking in their canoes their wives and children, cooking-pots, 
and sleeping-mats. When they reach a good game district, 
they erect temporary huts on the bank, and there dry the 
meat they have killed. . They are rather a comely-looking 
race, with very black, smooth skins, and never disfigure 
themselves with the frightful ornaments of some of the other 
tribes. The chief declined to sell a harpoon, because they 
could not now get the milola bark from the coast on account 
of Mariano's war. He expressed some doubts about our 
being children of the same Almighty Father, remarking that 
"they could not become white, let them wash ever so much." 
We made him a present of a bit of cloth, and he very gener- 
ously gave us, in return, some fine fresh fish and Indian corn. 

The heat of the weather steadily increases during this 
month (August), and foggy mornings are now rare. A 
strong breeze ending in a gale blows up stream every night. 
It came in the afternoon a few weeks ago, then later, and at 
present its arrival is near midnight ; it makes our frail cabin- 



4-6 SHIRAMBA DEMBE. Chap. I. 

doors fly open before it, but continues only for a short time, 
and is succeeded by a dead calm. Game becomes more 
abundant ; near our wooding-places we see herds of zebras, 
both Burch ell's and the mountain variety, pallahs (Antelope 
melampus), waterbuck, and wild hogs, with the spoor of buf- 
faloes and elephants. 

Shiramba Dembe, on the right bank, is deserted ; a few 
old iron guns show where a rebel stockade once stood ; near 
the river, above this, stands a magnificent Baobab hollowed 
out into a good-sized hut, with bark inside as well as with- 
out. The old oaks in Sherwood Forest, when hollow, have 
the inside dead or rotten ; but the Baobab, though stripped 
of its bark outside, and hollowed to a cavity inside, has the 
power of exuding new bark from its substance to both the 
outer and inner surface ; so a hut made like that in the oak 
called the "Forest Queen," in Sherwood, would soon all be 
lined with bark. 

The portions of the river called Shigogo and Shipanga 
are bordered by a low, level expanse of marshy country, 
with occasional clumps of palm-trees and a few thorny aca- 
cias. The river itself spreads out to a width of from three 
to four miles, with many islands, among which it is difficult 
to navigate, except when the river is in flood. In front, a 
range of high hills from the northeast crosses and com- 
presses it into a deep narrow channel, called the Lupata 
Gorge. The Portuguese thought the steamer would not 
stem the current here; but as it was not more than about 
three knots, and as there was a strong breeze in our favor, 
steam and sails got her through with ease. Heavy-laden 
canoes take two days to go up this pass. A current sweeps 
round the little rocky promontories Chifura and Kangomba, 



Chap. I. RIVER DEITIES. 47 

forming whirlpools and eddies dangerous for the clumsy 
craft, which are dragged past with long ropes. 

The paddlers place meal on these rocks as an offering to 
the turbulent deities, which they believe preside over spots 
fatal to many a large canoe. We were slyly told that native 
Portuguese take off their hats to these river gods, and pass 
in solemn silence ; when safely beyond the promontories, 
they fire muskets, and, as we ought to do, give the canoe- 
men grog. From the spoor of buffaloes and elephants it 
appears that these animals frequent Lupata in considerable 
numbers, and— we have often observed the association — the 
tsetse fly is common. A horse for the Governor of Tette 
was sent in a canoe from Quillimane ; and, lest it should be 
wrecked on the Chifura and Kangomba rocks, it was put on 
shore and sent in the daytime through the pass. It was of 
course bitten by the tsetse, and died soon after ; it was 
thought that the air of Tette had not agreed with it. The 
currents above Lupata are stronger than those below; the 
country becomes more picturesque and hilly, and there is a 
larger population. Within a few miles of Tette are numer- 
ous ruins of stone houses, which were destroyed some years 
ago by hostile natives. On our approaching the village, 
crowds of people, chiefly blacks, appeared on the beach, gaz- 
ing in astonishment at the steamer, and, by the motions of 
their arms, demonstrating to others farther off the manner in 
which the paddles revolved. 4 



48 RETURN TO THE MAKOLOLO. Chap. II. 



CHAPTER II. 

Meet Makololo at Tette.— Murder of Six of them by Bonga, the Son of Ny- 
aude. — Ravages of Smallpox. — Makololo supported not according to public 
Orders, but by the private Bounty of Major Sicard. — Convict Class called 
"Incorrigibles." — Superstitions about Mangoes, Coffee, and Rain-making. — 
Securing Slaves by means of domestic Ties. — Case of voluntary Slavery. — 
Cruel Nature of Half-castes. — Native love of Trade. — Native Medical Pro- 
fession. — Elephant and Crocodile Schools of Medicine. — Dice Doctors and 
their use as detective Police. — Senna and Indigo Plants. — Coal, Gold, and 
Iron. — Ascent to Kebrabasa Rapids. — Black Glaze on Rocks. — Tribe of Ba- 
dema. — A Traveler's Tale. — The River Luia. — Hippopotamus Flesh. — Dif- 
ficult Traveling. — Curative Sleep. — Sunstroke. — Morumbwa Cataract. — Ke- 
brabasa surveyed from End to End. 

The ship anchored in the stream off Tette on the 8th ,of 
September, 1858, and Dr. Livingstone went ashore in the 
boat. No sooner did the Makololo* recognize him than 
the j rushed to the water's edge, and manifested great joy at 
seeing him again. Some were hastening to embrace him, 
but others cried out, " Don't touch him ; you will spoil his 
new clothes." The five head men came on board and listen- 
ed in quiet sadness to the story of poor Sekwebu, who died 
at the Mauritius on his way to England. " Men die in any 
country," they observed, and then told us that thirty of their 
own number had died of smallpox, having been bewitched 
by the people of Tette, who envied them because, during the 
first year, none of their party had died. Six of their young 

* Makololo, Manganja, Ajawa, Batoka, Matebele, Babisa, Bawe, etc., etc., 
are all plural nouns ; Ma, Ba, A, being plural prefixes, which the Arabs change 
into Wa, as Wanyassa, the people of Nyassa, or Manganja, Wabisa, who call 
themselves Babisa, and sometimes Avisa. It has not been deemed necessary 
to add s to words already plural. 



Chap. II. MURDER OF MAKOLOLO BY BONGA. 49 

men, becoming ti^ed of cutting firewood for a meagre pit- 
tance, proposed to go and dance for gain before some of the 
neighboring chiefs. " Don't go," said the others ; " we don't 
know the people of this country ;" but the young men set 
out and visited an independent half-caste chief a few miles 
to the north, named Chisaka, who some years ago burned all 
the Portuguese villas on the north bank of the river ; after- 
ward the young men went to Bonga, son of another half- 
caste chief, who bade dofiance to the Tette authorities, and 
had a stockade at the confluence of the Zambesi and Luen- 
ya, a few miles below that village.* Asking the Makololo 
whence they came, Bonga rejoined, " Why do you come 
from my enemy to me? You have brought witchcraft 
medicine to kill me." In vain they protested that they did 
not belong to the country; they were strangers, and had 
come from afar with an Englishman. The superstitious 
savage put them all to death. " We do not grieve," said 
their companions, " for the thirty victims of the smallpox, 
who were taken away by Morimo (God), but our hearts are 
sore for the six youths who were murdered by Bonga." 
Any hope of obtaining justice on the murderer was out of 
the question. Bonga once caught a captain of the Portu- 
guese navy, and forced him to perform the menial labor of 
pounding maize in a wooden mortar. No punishment fol- 
lowed on this outrage. The government of Lisbon has 
since given Bonga the honorary title of Captain, by way 
of coaxing him to own their authority ; but he still holds 
his stockade. 

* This is not that Bonga, brother of Mariano, who was carrying on war in 
another quarter : the word means a "tiger-cat ;" and this was the son of Ny- 
aude, who, when the whole force of Tette was mustered at the Luenya, was 
sent- up the opposite bank by his father, and burned all the village save the 
church and fort. 

D 



50 PORTUGUESE DUPLICITY. Chap. II. 

One of the head men remarked "that they had some 
pigs ; they wished they had been oxen, but they were only 
pigs. Would the doctor eat pig?" "Why do you ask?" 
rejoined another ; " if he won't, his people will." When 
parting they remarked, u . We shall sleep to-night." The 
use of the Eesidencia, or Government House, was kindly 
given us by Major Tito A. d'A. Sicard : it is a stone house 
of one story, thatched with grass, its windows of cloth, and 
the floors of clay. The Makololo carried up our goods ; the 
minstrel of the party, called Singeleka, followed, jingling his 
native bells, and chanting an energetic song extemporized 
for the occasion. Some readers may remember that when 
Dr. Livingstone was in England, it was commonly reported 
that the Portuguese government had sent out orders to have 
the Makololo supported at the public expense until he re- 
turned to take them back to their own country. This gen- 
erous sympathy on the part of the ministers in Lisbon grati- 
fied many English philanthropists, and, relieving the doc- 
tor's mind from anxiety, gave him time to prepare his jour- 
nal for the press before setting out again to his work. 
When our own government promises to perform any thing, 
no one in his senses ever doubts their word of honor ; and 
for this reason the English people and the English govern- 
ment naturally err by giving too ready credit to the assur- 
ances of governments whose moral tone is pitched much 
lower than their own. The Makololo never heard of the 
order from Portugal, and the Portuguese authorities at Tette 
were in profound ignorance of its existence. The pay of 
the officials, in fact, was several years in arrear, and for his 
most faithful majesty's government to pretend to order them 
to feed a hundred men out of their own private means look- 
ed a little like the not unusual kind of benevolence of being 



Chap. II. DESCRIPTION OF TETTE. 52 

generous with other people's property. The poor fellows 
had to go far to cut wood, and then hawk it round the vil- 
lage to buy a little food. They received no aid from the 
Mozambique government ; but Major Sicard did assist them 
most generously at his own cost, and also gave them land 
and hoes to raise some food for themselves. 

Tette stands on a succession of low sandstone ridges on 
the right bank of the Zambesi, which is here nearly a thou- 
sand yards wide (960 yards). Shallow ravines, running par- 
allel with the river, form the streets, the houses being built 
on the ridges. The whole surface of the streets, except nar- 
row footpaths, were overrun with self-sown indigo, and tons 
of it might have been collected. In fact, indigo, senna, and 
stramonium, with a species of cassia, form the weeds of the 
place, which are annually hoed off and burned. A wall of 
stone and mud surrounds the village, and the native popu- 
lation live in huts outside. The fort and the church, near 
the river, are the strong-holds ; the natives having a saluta- 
ry dread of the guns of the one, and a superstitious fear of 
the unknown power of the other. The number of white 
inhabitants is small, and rather select, many of them having 
been considerately sent out of Portugal "for their country's 
good." The military element preponderates in society ; the 
convict and " incorrigible" class of soldiers, receiving very 
little pay, depend in great measure on the produce of the 
gardens of their black wives ; the moral condition of the 
resulting population may be imagined. Even the officers 
seldom receive their pay from government ; but, being of 
an enterprising spirit, they contrive to support themselves 
by marrying the daughters or widows of wealthy merchants, 
and trade in ivory by means of the slaves of whom they 
thus become the masters. 



52 SUPERSTITIONS OF AFRICANS. Chap. II. 

Droughts are of frequent occurrence at Tette, and the 
crops suffer severely. This may arise partly from the posi- 
tion of the town between the ranges of hills north and south, 
which appear to have a strong attraction for the rain-clouds. 
It is often seen to rain on these hills when not a drop falls 
at Tette. Our first season was one of drought. Thrice had 
the women planted their gardens in vain ; the seed, after 
just vegetating, was killed by the intense dry heat. A 
fourth planting shared the same hard fate, and then some 
of the knowing ones discovered the cause of the clouds be- 
ing frightened away — our unlucky rain-gauge in the garden. 
We got a bad name through that same rain-gauge, and were 
regarded by many as a species of evil omen. The Makololo, 
in turn, blamed the people of Tette for drought : "A num- 
ber of witches live here, who won't let it rain." Africans 
in general are sufficiently superstitious, but those of Tette 
are in this particular pre-eminent above their fellows. Com- 
ing from many, different tribes, all the rays of the separate 
superstitions converge into a focus at Tette, and burn out 
common sense from the minds of the mixed breed. They 
believe that many evil spirits live in the air, the earth, and 
the water. These invisible malicious beings are thought to 
inflict much suffering on the human race ; but, as they have 
a weakness for beer and a craving for food, they may be 
propitiated from time to time by offerings of meat and 
drink. The serpent is an object of worship, and hideous 
little images are hung in the huts of the sick and dying. 
The uncontaminated Africans believe that Morungo, the 
Great Spirit who formed all things, lives above the stars ; 
but they never pray to him, and know nothing of their re- 
lation to him, or of his interest in them. The spirits of their 
departed ancestors are all good, according to their ideas, and 



Chap. II. MANGOES— COFFEE— RAIN-MAKING. 53 

on special occasions aid them in their enterprises. When a 
man has his hair cut, he is careful to burn it, or bury it se- 
cretly, lest, falling into the hands of one who has an evil 
eye, or is a witch, it should be used as a charm to afflict 
him with headache. They believe, too, that they will live 
after the death of the body, but do not know any thing of 
the state of the Barimo (gods, or departed spirits). 

The mango-tree grows luxuriantly above Lupata, and 
furnishes a grateful shade. Its delicious fruit is superior to 
that on the coast. For weeks the natives who have charge 
of the mangoes live entirely on the fruit, and, as some trees 
bear in November and some in March, while the main crop 
comes between, fruit in abundance may easily be obtained 
during four months of the year ; but no native can be in- 
duced to plant a mango. A wide-spread superstition has 
become riveted in the native mind that if any one plants 
this tree he will soon die. The Makololo, like other na- 
tives, were very fond of the fruit ; but when told to take up 
some mango-stones on their return, and plant them in their 
own country — they too having become deeply imbued with 
the belief that it was a suicidal act to do so — replied " they 
did not wish to die too soon." There is also a superstition 
even among the native Portuguese of Tette that if a man 
plants coffee he will never afterward be happy : they drink 
it, however, and seem the happier for it. 

During the drought of 1858 a neighboring chief got up 
a performance, with divers ceremonies and incantations, to 
bring rain, but it would not come. The Goanese padre of 
Tette, to satisfy his compatriots, appointed a procession and 
prayers in honor of Saint Antonio for the same purpose. 
The first attempt did not answer, but on the second occa- 
sion, arranged to come off after the new moon appeared, a 



54 VEGETATION ANTICIPATING SPRING. Chap. II. 

grand procession in the saint's honor ended in so much rain 
that the roof of the Eesidencia gave way ; Saint Antonio's 
image was decorated the following week with a golden cor- 
onal worth £22, for sending the long-delayed and much- 
needed rain. We never looked with disdain on the rites 
or ceremonies of any Church ; but, on witnessing the acts 
of worship on this occasion, so great was the irreverence 
manifested — the kneeling worshipers laughing and joking 
between the responses, not even ceasing their grins when 
uttering " Ora pro nobis" — that we could not help believing 
that if, like the natives, they have faith in rain-making, they 
have faith in nothing else. 

Most of the trees shed their leaves in May, the beginning 
of winter, and remain bare until the rains come in Novem- 
ber ; several kinds are in the curious habit of anticipating, 
as it were, the rains by instinct ; and in the beginning of 
October, when the dry season has reached its driest point, 
and there is not a drop of dew, they begin to generate buds, 
and in a few days put forth fresh and various-hued foliage, 
and sometimes beautiful blossoms. In a somewhat similar 
manner, the trees in the arctic regions are said to anticipate 
the coming spring, and display fresh green leaves when the 
ground is hard frozen to a depth greater than that to which 
roots ever penetrate. 

The Portuguese of Tette have many slaves, -with all the 
usual vices of their class, as theft, lying, and impurity. As 
a general rule, the real Portuguese are tolerably humane 
masters, and rarely treat a slave cruelly : this may be due 
as much to natural kindness of heart as to a fear of losing 
the slaves by their running away. When they purchase an 
adult slave, they buy, at the same time, if possible, all his 
relations along with him. They thus contrive to secure him 



Chap. II. CASE OF VOLUNTARY SLAVERY. 55 

to his new home by domestic ties. Running away then 
would be to forsake all who hold a place in his heart for the 
mere chance of acquiring a freedom which would probably 
be forfeited on his entrance into the first native village, for 
the chief might, without compunction, again sell him into 
slavery. 

A rather singular case of voluntary slavery came to our 
knowledge : a free black, an intelligent, active young fellow, 
called Chibanti, who had been our pilot on the river, told us 
that he had sold himself into slavery. On asking why he 
had done this, he replied that he was all alone in the world, 
had neither father nor mother, nor any one else to give him 
water when sick, or food when hungry; so he sold himself 
to Major Sicard, a notoriously kind master, whose slaves 
had little to do, and plenty to eat. " And how much did 
you get for yourself?" we asked. " Three thirty-yard pieces 
of cotton cloth," he replied ; " and I forthwith bought a 
man, a woman, and child, who cost me two of the pieces, 
and I had one piece left." This, at all events, showed a cool 
and calculating spirit; he afterward bought more slaves, 
and in two years owned a sufficient number to man one 
of the large canoes. His master subsequently employed 
him in carrying ivory to Quillimane, and gave him cloth 
to hire mariners for the voyage ; he took his own slaves, of 
course, and thus drove a thriving business ; and was fully 
convinced that he had made a good speculation by the sale 
of himself, for, had he been sick, his master must have sup- 
ported him. Occasionally some of the free blacks become 
slaves voluntarily by going through the simple but signifi- 
cant ceremony of breaking a spear in the presence of their 
future master. A Portuguese officer, since dead, persuaded 
one of the Makololo to remain in Tette instead of returning 



56 NATIVE LOVE OF TRADE. Chap. II. 

to his own country, and tried also to induce him to break a 
spear before him, and thus acknowledge himself his slave, 
but the man was too shrewd for this ; he was a great ele- 
phant doctor, who accompanied the hunters, told them when 
to attack the huge beast, and gave them medicine to insure 
success. Unlike the real Portuguese, many of the half-castes 
are merciless slaveholders ; their brutal treatment of the 
wretched slaves is notorious. What a humane native of 
Portugal once said of them is appropriate, if not true : " God 
made white men, and God made black men, but the devil 
made half-castes." 

The officers and merchants send parties of slaves under 
faithful head men to hunt elephants and to trade in ivory, 
providing them with a certain quantity of cloth, beads, etc., 
and requiring so much ivory in return. These slaves think 
that they have made a good thing of it when they kill an 
elephant near a village, as the natives give them beer and 
meal in exchange for some of the elephant's meat, and over 
every tusk that is bought there is expended a vast amount 
of time, talk, and beer. Most of the Africans are natural- 
born traders ; they love trade more for the sake of trading 
than for what they make by it. An intelligent gentleman 
of Tette told us that native traders often come to him witn 
a tusk for sale, consider the price he offers, demand more, 
talk over it, retire to consult about it, and at length go away 
without selling it; next day they try another merchant, 
talk, consider, get puzzled, and go off as on the previous 
day, and continue this course daily until they have per- 
haps seen every merchant in the village, and then at last 
end by selling the precious tusk to some one for even less 
than the first merchant had offered. Their love of dawdling 
in the transaction arises from the self-importance conferred 



Chap. II. NATIVE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 57 

on them by their being the object of the wheedling and 
coaxing of eager merchants, a feeling to which even the 
love of gain is subordinate. 

The native medical profession is reasonably well repre- 
sented. In addition to the regular practitioners, who are a 
really useful class, and know something of Iheir profession, 
and the nature and power of certain medicines, there are 
others who devote their talents to some specialty. The ele- 
phant doctor prepares a medicine which is considered indis- 
pensable to the hunters when attacking that noble and sa- 
gacious beast; no hunter is willing to venture out before 
investing in this precious nostrum. The crocodile doctor 
sells a charm which is believed to possess the singular vir- 
tue of protecting its owner from crocodiles. Unwittingly 
we offended the crocodile school of medicine while at Tette 
by shooting one of these huge reptiles as it lay basking in 
the sun on a sand-bank ; the doctors came to the Makololo 
in wrath, clamoring to know why the white man had shot 
their crocodile. 

A shark's hook was baited one evening with a dog, of 
which the crocodile is said to be particularly fond; but the 
doctors removed the bait, on the principle that the more 
crocodiles the more demand for medicine, or perhaps be- 
cause they preferred to eat the dog themselves. Many of 
the natives of this quarter are known, as in the South Seas, 
to eat the dog without paying any attention to its feeding. 
The dice doctor or diviner is an important member of the 
community, being consulted by Portuguese and natives alike. 
Part of his business is that of a detective, it being his duty 
to discover thieves. When goods are stolen, he goes and 
looks at the place, casts his dice, and waits a few days, and 
then, for a consideration, tells who is the thief: he is gen- 



58 VEGETABLE AND MINERAL PKODUCTIONS. Chap. II. 

erally correct, for he trusts not to his dice alone ; he has 
confidential agents all over the village, by whose inquiries 
and information he is enabled to detect the culprit. Since 
the introduction of muskets, gun doctors have sprung up, 
and they sell the medicine which professes to make good 
marksmen; others are rain doctors, etc., etc. The various 
schools deal in little charms, which are hung round the pur- 
chaser's neck to avert evil : some of them contain the medi- 
cine, others increase its power. 

Indigo, about three or four feet high, grows in great lux- 
uriance in the streets of Tette, and so does the senna plant. 
The leaves are undistinguishable from those imported in 
England. We set the Makololo to collect specimens, but 
the natives objected to their doing so, though they them- 
selves never make use of them. A small amount of first- 
rate cotton is cultivated by the native population for the 
manufacture of a coarse cloth. In former times the Portu- 
guese collected it at a cheap rate, and made use of it instead 
of the calico now imported, to exchange for the Manica gold 
dust. A neighboring tribe raises the sugar-cane, and makes 
a little sugar; but they use most primitive wooden rollers, 
and having no skill in mixing lime with the extracted juice, 
the product is of course of very inferior quality. Plenty of 
magnetic iron ore is found near Tette, and coal also to any 
amount, a single cliff- seam measuring twenty-five feet in 
thickness. It was found to burn well in the steamer on the 
first trial. The ash showed a large quantity of shaly re- 
fuse; but, suspecting that this was from the coal near the 
surface having been exposed to the weather for ages, we 
drove a shaft of some thirty feet, and the mineral was found 
to improve the farther we went in. Gold is washed for in 
the beds of rivers, within a couple of days of Tette. The 



Chap. II. KEBKABASA KAPIDS. 59 

natives are fully aware of its value, but seldom search for 
it, and never dig deeper than four or five feet. They dread 
lest the felling in of the sand of the river's bed should bury 
them. In former times, when traders went with hundreds 
of slaves to the washings, the produce was considerable. 
It is now insignificant. The gold-producing lands have al- 
ways been in the hands of independent tribes. Deep cut- 
tings near the sources of the gold-yielding streams seem 
never to have been tried here, as in California and Austra- 
lia, nor has any machinery been used save common wooden 
basins for washing. 

Our curiosity had been so much excited by the reports 
we heard of the Kebrabasa Eapids, that we resolved to 
make a short examination of them, and seized the oppor- 
tunity of the Zambesi being unusually low to endeavor to 
ascertain their character while uncovered by the water. 
"We reached them on the 9th of November. The country 
between Tette and Panda Mokua, where navigation ends, 
is well wooded and hilly on both banks. Panda Mokua 
is a hill two miles below the rapids, capped with dolomite 
containing copper ore. 

Conspicuous among the trees for its gigantic size, and 
bark colored exactly like Egyptian syenite, is the burly Ba- 
obab. It often makes the other trees of the forest look like 
mere bushes in comparison. A hollow one, already men- 
tioned, is 74 feet in circumference, another was 84, and some 
have been found on the West Coast which measures 100 
feet. Their great size induced some to imagine that they 
afforded evidence that the flood of Noah never took place. 
A careful examination of many hundreds in the forests, and 
of some which have sprung up in the floors of old stone 
houses, convinces us, from the number of concentric rings, 



60 GEOLOGY OF KEBRABASA. Chap. II. 

that even the very largest specimens of this remarkably 
soft-wooded tree are not 500 years old. The lofty range 
of Kebrabasa, consisting chiefly of conical hills, covered 
with scraggy trees, crosses the Zambesi, and confines it 
within a narrow, rough, and rocky dell of about a quarter 
of a mile in breadth ; over this, which may be called the 
flood-bed of the river, large masses of rock are huddled in 
indescribable confusion. The drawing, for the use of which, 
and of others, our thanks are due to Lord Eussell, conveys 
but a faint idea of the scene, inasmuch as the hills which 
confine the river do not appear in the sketch. The chief 
rock is syenite, some portions of which have a beautiful blue 
tinge like lapis lazuli diffused through them ; others are 
gray. Blocks of granite also abound, of a pinkish tinge : 
and these, with metamorphic rocks, contorted, twisted, and 
thrown into every conceivable position, afford a picture of 
dislocation or unconformability which would gladden a geo- 
logical lecturer's heart ; but at high flood this rough chan- 
nel is all smoothed over, and it then conforms well with 
the river below it, which is half a mile wide. In the dry 
season the stream runs at the bottom of a narrow and deep 
groove, whose sides are polished and fluted by the boiling 
action of the water in flood, like the rims of ancient Eastern 
wells by the draw-ropes. The breadth of the groove is 
often not more than forty to sixty yards, and it has some 
sharp turnings, double channels, and little cataracts in it, 
As we steamed up, the masts of the " Ma Eobert," though 
some thirty feet high, did not reach the level of the flooded 
channel above, and the man in the chains sung out, "No 
bottom at ten fathoms." Huge pot-holes, as large as draw- 
wells, had been worn in the sides, and were so deep that in 
some instances, when protected from the sun by overhang- 



~^ _ ~ _ |( : . ' '■ ■ ■ ■-; Tr^i gj| 




Illllll 



Chap. II. EXAMINATION OF THE EAPIDS. 68 

ing boulders, the water in them was quite cool. Some of 
these' holes had been worn right through, and only the side 
next the rock remained, while the sides of the groove of 
the flood -channel were polished as smooth as if they had 
gone through the granite mills of Aberdeen. The pressure 
of the water must be enormous to produce this polish. It 
had wedged round pebbles into chinks and crannies of the 
rocks so firmly that, though they looked quite loose, they 
could not be moved except with a hammer. The mighty 
power of the water here seen gave us an idea of what is 
going on in thousands of cataracts in the world. All the 
information we had been able to obtain from our Portu- 
guese friends amounted to this, that some three or four de- 
tached rocks jutted out of the river in Kebrabasa, which, 
though dangerous to the cumbersome native canoes, could 
be easily passed by a steamer, and that if one or two of 
these obstructions were blasted away with gunpowder, no 
difficulty would hereafter be experienced. After we had 
painfully explored seven or eight miles of the rapid, we re- 
turned to the vessel, satisfied that much greater labor was 
requisite for the mere examination of the cataracts than our 
friends supposed necessary to remove them ; we therefore 
went down .the river for fresh supplies, and made prepara- 
tion for a more serious survey of this region. 

The steamer having returned from the bar, we set out on 
the 22 d of November to examine the rapids of Kebrabasa* 
We reached the foot of the hills again late in the afternoon 
of the 24th, and anchored in the stream. Canoe-men never 
sleep on the river, but always spend the night on shore. The 

* The word as pronounced by the natives is Kaora-basa, "finish or break 
the service." The Portuguese word Kebra (quebra) means the same thing, 
and refers to the break which occurs in the labor of toiling up thus far in heavy 
canoes, and then carrying the luggage hence overland to Chicova. 



64 EXAMINATION OF THE RAPIDS. Chap. II. 

natives on the right bank, in the country called Shidima, who 
are Banyai, and, even at this short distance from Tette, inde- 
pendent, and accustomed to lord it over Portuguese traders, 
wondered what could be our object in remaining afloat, and 
were naturally suspicious at our departing from the universal 
custom. 

They hailed us from the bank in the evening with "why 
don't you come and sleep on shore like other people?" 

The answer they received from our Makalolo, who now 
felt as independent as the Banyai, was, "We are held to 
the bottom with iron; you may see we are not like your 
Bazungu." 

This hint, a little amplified, saved us from the usual exac- 
tions. It is pleasant to give a present, but that pleasure the 
Banyai usually deny to strangers by making it a fine, and 
demanding it in such a supercilious way that only a sorely- 
cowed trader could bear it. They often refuse to touch what 
is offered — throw it down and leave it — sneer at the trader's 
slaves, and refuse a passage until the tribute is raised to the 
utmost extent of his means. 

Leaving the steamer next morning, we proceeded on foot, 
accompanied by a native Portuguese and his men and a doz- 
en Makololo, who carried our baggage. The morning was 
pleasant ; the hills on our right furnished for a time a delight- 
ful shade ; but, before long, the path grew frightfully rough, 
and the hills no longer shielded us from the blazing sun. 
Scarcely a vestige of a track was now visible ; and, indeed, 
had not our guide assured us to the contrary, we should have 
been innocent of even the suspicion of a way along the patch- 
es of soft yielding sand, and on the great rocks over which 
we so painfully clambered. These rocks have a singular ap- 
pearance, from being dislocated and twisted in every direc- 



Chap. II. BLACK GLAZE ON ROCKS.— BADEMA TRIBE. 65 

tion, and covered with a thin black glaze, as if highly polish- 
ed and coated with lamp-black varnish. This seems to have 
been deposited while the river was in flood, for it covers only 
those rocks which lie between the highest water-mark and a 
line about four feet above the lowest. Travelers who have 
visited the rapids of the Orinoco and the Congo say that the 
rocks there have a similar appearance, and it is attributed to 
some deposit from the water, formed only when the current 
is strong. This may account for it in part here, as it prevails 
only where the narrow river is confined between masses of 
rock, backed by high hills, and where the current in floods is 
known to be the strongest ; and it does not exist where the 
rocks are only on one side, with a sandy beach opposite, and 
a broad expanse of river between. The hot rocks burnt the 
thick soles of our men's feet, and sorely fatigued ourselves. 
Our first day's march did not exceed four miles in a straight 
line, and that we found more than enough to be pleasant. 

A few inhabitants, of the tribe called Badema, were seen 
living in the valleys. They cultivate small quantities of 
maize, tobacco, and cotton in the available hollows, and the 
holcus sorghum, or, as they call it, "mapira," on the steep 
slopes of their mountains. Fish are caught in the river with 
casting nets. Zebras, antelopes, and other animals are taken 
by driving them into ravines, strong nets made of baobab- 
bark being stretched across the narrow outlets. 

The state of insecurity in which the Bad&ma tribe live is 
indicated by the habit of hiding their provisions in the hills, 
and keeping only a small quantity in their huts ; they strip 
a particular species of tree of its bitter bark, to which both 
mice and monkeys are known to have an antipathy, and, 
turning the bark inside out, sew it into cylindrical vessels 
for their grain, and bury them in holes and in crags on the 

B 



66 A TRAVELER'S TALE. * Chap. II. 

wooded hill-sides. By this means, should a marauding party 
plunder their huts, they save a supply of corn. They " could 
give us no information, and they had no food ; Chisaka's men 
had robbed them a few weeks before." 

"Never mind," said our native Portuguese, " they will sell 
you plenty when you return ; they are afraid of you now ; 
as yet they do not know who you are." "We slept under 
trees in the open air, and suffered no inconvenience from 
either musquitoes or dew ; and no prowling wild beast troub- 
led us; though one evening, while we were here, a native 
sitting with some others on the opposite bank was killed by 
a leopard. 

One of the Tette slaves, who wished to be considered a 
great traveler, gave us, as we sat by our evening fire, an in- 
teresting account of a strange race of men whom he had seen 
in the interior ; they were only three feet high, and had horns 
growing out of their heads ; they lived in a large town, and 
had plenty of food. The Makololo pooh-poohed this story, 
and roundly told the narrator that he was telling a down- 
right lie. "We come from the interior," cried out a tall fel- 
low, measuring some six feet four; "are we dwarfs? have we 
horns on our heads?" and thus they laughed the fellow to 
scorn. But he still stoutly maintained that he had seen these 
little people, and had actually been in their town, thus mak- 
ing himself the hero of the traditional story, which, before 
and since the time of Herodotus, has, with curious persist- 
ency, clung to the native mind. The mere fact that such ab- 
surd notions are permanent, even in the entire absence of lit- 
erature, invests the religious ideas of these people also with 
importance, as fragments of the wreck of a primitive faith 
floating down the stream of time. 

We waded across the rapid Luia, which took us up to the 



Chap. II. DIFFICULT TRAVELING. 67 

waist, and was about forty yards wide. The water was dis- 
colored at the time, and we were not without apprehension 
that a crocodile might chance to fancy a white man for din- 
ner. Next day one of the men crawled over the black rocks 
to within ten yards of a sleeping hippopotamus, and shot him 
through the brain. The weather being warm, the body float- 
ed in a few hours, and some of us had our first trial of hip- 
popotamus flesh. It is a coarse-grained meat, something be- 
tween pork and beef — pretty good food when one is hungry 
and can get nothing better. When we reached the foot of 
the mountain called Chipereziwa, whose perpendicular rocky 
sides are clothed with many-colored lichens, our Portuguese 
companion informed us there were no more obstructions to 
navigation, the river being all smooth above ; he had hunted 
there and knew it well. Supposing that the object of our 
trip was accomplished, we turned back ; but two natives, who 
came to our camp at night, assured us that a cataract, called 
Morumbwa, did still exist in front. Drs. Livingstone and 
Kirk then decided to go forward with three Makololo and 
settle the question for themselves. It was as tough a bit of 
travel as they ever had in Africa, and, after some painful 
marching, the Badema guides refused to go farther; "the 
Banyai," they said, "would be angry if they showed white 
men the country ; and there was, besides, no practicable ap- 
proach to the spot ; neither elephant, nor hippopotamus, nor 
even a crocodile could reach the cataract." The slopes of 
the mountains on each side of the river, now not 300 yards 
wide, and without the flattish flood-channel and groove, were 
more than 3000 feet, from the sky-line down, and were cov- 
ered either with dense thornbush or huge black boulders: 
this deep, trough-like shape caused the sun's rays to converge 
as into a focus, making the surface so hot that the soles of the 



08 CURATIVE SLEEP. 

feet of the Makololo became blistered. Around, and up and 
down, the party clambered among these heated blocks, at a 
pace not exceeding a mile an hour ; the strain upon the mus- 
cles in jumping from crag to boulder, and wriggling round 
projections, took an enormous deal out of them, and they 
were often glad to cower in the shadow formed by one rock 
overhanging and resting on another ; the shelter induced the 
peculiarly strong and overpowering inclination to sleep, 
which too much sun sometimes causes. This sleep is cura- 
tive of what may be incipient sunstroke : in its first gentle 
touches, it caused the dream to flit over the boiling brain that 
they had become lunatics, and had been sworn in as members 
of the Alpine club ; and then it became so heavy that it made 
them feel as if a portion of existence had been cut out from 
their lives. The sun is excessively hot, and feels sharp in 
Africa ; but, probably from the greater dryness of the atmos- 
phere, we never heard of a single case of sunstroke, so com- 
mon in India. The Makololo told Dr. Livingstone they 
" always thought he had a heart, but now they believed he 
had none," and tried to persuade Dr. Kirk to return, on the 
ground that it must be evident that, in attempting to go 
where no living foot could tread, his leader had given un- 
mistakable signs of having gone mad. All their efforts of 
persuasion, however, were lost upon Dr. Kirk, as he had not 
yet learned their language, and his leader, knowing his com- 
panion to be equally anxious with himself to solve the prob- 
lem of the navigableness of Kebrabasa, was not at pains to 
enlighten him. At one part a bare mountain spur barred 
the way, and had to be surmounted by a perilous and circui- 
tous route, along which the crags were so hot that it was 
scarcely possible for the hand to hold on long enough to in- 
sure safety in the passage ; and had the foremost of the party 



Chap. II. MOUNT MOKUMBWA. 69 

lost his hold, he would have hurled all behind him into the 
river at the foot of the promontory ; yet in this wild hot re- 
gion, as they descended again to the river, they met a fisher- 
man casting his hand-net into the boiling eddies, and he point- 
ed out the cataract of Morumbwa : within an hour they were 
trying to measure it from an overhanging rock, at a height 
of about one hundred feet. When you stand facing the cat- 
aract on the north bank, you see that it is situated in a sud- 
den bend of the river, which is flowing in a short curve ; the 
river above it is jammed between two mountains in a chan- 
nel with perpendicular sides, and less than fifty yards wide ; 
one or two masses of rock jut out, and then there" is a sloping 
fall of perhaps twenty feet in a distance of thirty yards. It 
would stop all navigation except during the highest floods; 
the rocks showed that the water then rises upward of eighty 
feet perpendicularly. 

Still keeping the position facing the cataract, on its right 
side rises Mount Morumbwa from 2000 to 3000 feet high, 
which gives the name to the spot. On the left of the cat- 
aract stands a noticeable mountain which may be called 
onion-shaped, for it is partly conical, and a large concave 
flake has peeled off, as granite often does, and left a broad, 
smooth convex face, as if it were an enormous bulb. These 
two mountains extend their base northward about half a 
mile, and the river in that distance, still very narrow, is 
smooth, with a few detached rocks standing out from its 
bed. They climbed as high up the base of Mount Morumb- 
wa, which touches the cataract, as they required. The rocks 
were all water-worn and smooth, with huge pot-holes, even 
at 100 feet above low water. When, at a later period, they 
climbed up the northwestern base of this same mountain, 
the familiar face of the onion-shaped one opposite was at 



70 KEBEABASA SUKVEY COMPLETED. Chap. II. 

once recognized ; one point of view on the talus of Mount 
Morumbwa was not more than 700 or 800 yards distant 
from the other, and they then completed the survey of Ke- 
brabasa from end to end. 

They did not attempt to return by the way they came, 
but scaled the slope of the mountain on the north. It 
took them three hours' hard labor in cutting their way up 
through the dense thornbush which covered the ascent. 
The face of the slope was often about an angle of 70°, yet 
their guide Shokumbenla, whose hard, horny soles, resem- 
bling those of elephants, showed that he was accustomed to 
this rough and hot work, carried a pot of water for them 
nearly all the way up. They slept that night at a well in 
a tufaceous rock on the N.W. of Chipereziwa, and never 
was sleep more sweet. 



Chap. III. NATIVE MUSICIANS. 73 



CHAPTER III. 

Return from Kebrabasa. — Native Musicians and their Instruments. — Igno- 
rance at Tette. — Changes produced by Rain after the hot Season. — Christ- 
mas in tropical Dress. — Opinions modified by early Associations in North- 
ern Climes. — The Seasons at Tette. — Cotton-seed not needed. — African 
Fever. — Quinine not a Preventive of. — The best Precaution and Remedy. — 
"Warburgh's Drops." — Expedition turns from Kebrabasa toward the River 
Shire in January, 1859. — Reported Barrier to Navigation. — First Inter- 
course with unknown People. — Navigation of Shire. — Progress prevented 
by Murchison's Cataracts. — Return to Tette. — Second Trip up the Shire in 
March, 1859. — Chibisa. — Nyanja Mukulu. — Maniac Guides. — Discover Lake 
Shirwa on the 18th of April, 1859. — Mountains. — Return to the Vessel. — 
Severe case of Fever. — Return to Tette on the 23d of June. — Vessel found 
to be built of unstable Materials. — At Kongone in August. 

A band of native musicians came to our camp one even- 
ing on our way down, and treated us with their wild and 
not unpleasant music on the marimba, an instrument formed 
of bars of hard wood of varying breadth and thickness, laid 
on different-sized hollow calabashes, and tuned to give the 
notes : a few pieces of cloth pleased them, and they passed 
on. 

As our companion had told us, the people were perfectly 
willing to sell us provisions on our way back. When we 
arrived at Tette the commandant informed us that, shortly 
after we had left, the river rose a foot and became turbid ; 
and on seeing this, a native Portuguese came to him with a 
grave countenance, and said, " That Englishman is doing 
something to the river." This, we regret to say, is a fair 
sample of the ignorance and superstition common to the na- 
tive-born, and, unfortunately, sometimes shared in even by 



74 DELIGHTFUL EFFECTS OF RAIN. Chap. III. 

men reared in Portugal. While we were at Tette, a cap- 
tain of infantry was sent prisoner to Mozamhique for ad- 
ministering the muave, or ordeal, and for putting the sus- 
pected person to death on that evidence alone. 

At the end of the hot season every thing is dry and 
dusty; the atmosphere is loaded with blue haze, and very 
sultry. After the rains begin, the face of the country 
changes with surprising rapidity for the better. Though we 
have not the moist hot-house-like atmosphere of the West 
Coast, fresh green herbage quickly springs up over the hills 
and dales so lately parched and brown. The air becomes 
cleared of the smoky -looking haze, and one sees to great dis- 
tances with ease ; the landscape is bathed in a perfect flood 
of light, and a delightful sense of freshness is given from 
every thing in the morning before the glare of noon over- 
powers the eye. On asking one of the Bechuanas once what 
he understood by the word used for "holiness" (boitsepho), 
he answered, " When copious showers have descended dur- 
ing the night, and all the earth, and leaves, and cattle are 
washed clean, and the sun, rising, shows a drop of dew on 
every blade of grass, 'and the air breathes fresh, that is holi- 
ness." The young foliage of several trees, more especially 
on the highlands, comes out brown, pale red, or pink, like 
the hues of autumnal leaves in England, and as the leaves 
increase in size they change to a pleasant fresh light green ; 
bright white, scarlet, pink, and yellow flowers are every 
where ; and some few of dark crimson, like those of the ki- 
gelia, give warmth of coloring to Nature's garden. Many 
trees, such as the scarlet erythrina, attract the eye by the 
beauty of their blossoms. The white, full bloom of the ba- 
obab, coming at times before the rains, and the small and 
delicate flowers of other trees, grouped into rich clusters, 



Chap. III. VARIETIES OF BIRDS AND INSECTS. 75 

deck the forest. Myriads of wild bees are busy from morn- 
ing till night. Some of the acacias possess a peculiar attrac- 
tion for one species of beetle, while the palm allures others 
to congregate on its ample leaves. Insects of all sorts are 
now in full force ; brilliant butterflies flit from flower to 
flower, and with the charming little sunbirds, which repre- 
sent the humming-birds of America and the West Indies, 
never seem to tire. Multitudes of ants are hard at work 
hunting for food, or bearing it home in triumph. The win- 
ter birds of passage, such as the yellow wagtail and blue 
drongo shrikes, have all gone, and other kinds have come : 
the brown kite, with his piping like a boatswain's whistle ; 
the spotted cuckoo, with a call like "pula;" and the roller 
and hornbill, with their loud high notes, are occasionally dis- 
tinctly heard, though generally their harsher music is half 
drowned in the volume of sweet sounds poured forth from 
many a throbbing throat, which makes an African Christ- 
mas seem like an English May. Some birds of the weaver 
kind have laid aside their winter garments of a sober brown, 
and appear in a gay summer dress of scarlet and jet black ; 
others have passed from green to bright yellow, with patch- 
es like black velvet. The brisk little cock whydah-bird, 
with a pink bill, after assuming his summer garb of black 
and white, has graceful plumes attached to his new coat; 
his finery, as some believe, is to please at least seven hen- 
birds with which he is said to live. Birds of song are not 
entirely confined to villages ; but they have in Africa so 
often been observed to congregate around villages as to pro- 
duce the impression that song and beauty may have been 
intended to please the ear and eye of man, for it is only 
when we approach the haunts of men that we know that 
the time of the singing of birds is come. We once thought 



76 CHRISTMAS IN TROPICAL DRESS. Chap. III. 

that the little creatures were attracted to man only by grain 
and water, till we saw deserted villages, the people all swept 
off by slavery, with grain standing by running streams, but 
no birds. A red-throated black weaver-bird comes in flocks 
a little later, wearing a long train of magnificent plumes, 
which seem to be greatly in his way when working for his 
dinner among the long grass. A goatsucker or night-jar 
(Cometornis vexillarius), only ten inches long from head to 
tail, also attracts the eye in November by a couple of feath- 
ers twenty-six inches long in the „ middle of each wing, the 
ninth and tenth from the outside. They give a slow, wavy 
motion to the wings, and evidently retard his flight, for at 
other times he flies so quick that no boy could hit him with 
a stone. The natives can kill a hare by throwing a club, 
and make good running shots, but no one ever struck a 
night-jar in common dress, though in the evening twilight 
they settle close to one's feet. What may be the object of 
the flight of the male bird being retarded we can not tell. 
The males alone possess these feathers, and only for a time. 
It appears strange to have Christmas come in such a 
cheerful bright season as this; one can hardly recognize it 
in summer dress, with singing birds, springing corn, and 
flowery plains, instead of in the winter robes of by-gone 
days, when the keen bracing air, and ground clad in a man- 
tle of snow, made the cozy fireside meeting-place of families 
doubly comfortable. The associations of early days spent 
in a Northern clime dispose us to view other lands with 
rather contracted notions, and, like the Esquimaux who were 
brought to Europe, to look cheerlessly at this sunny portion 
of our fair world, which is unhealthy only because the ex- 
uberant fertility with which the Maker has endowed it to 
yield abundant food for man and beast is allowed to run to 



Chap. III. ERRONEOUS EUROPEAN NOTIONS. 77 

waste. In reference to it and its inhabitants, it was long 
ago remarked that in Africa every thing was contrary; 
" wool grows on the heads of men, and hair on the backs of 
sheep." In feeble imitation of this dogma, let us add, that 
the men often wear their hair long, the women scarcely ever. 
Where there are cattle, the women till the land, plant the 
corn, and build the huts. The men stay at home to sew, 
spin, weave, and talk, and milk the cows. The men seem 
to pay a dowry for their wives instead of getting one with 
them. The mountaineers of Europe are reckoned hospita- 
ble, generous, and brave. Those of this part of Africa are 
feeble, spiritless, and cowardly, even when contrasted with 
their own countrymen on the plains. Some Europeans aver 
that Africans and themselves are descended from monkeys. 
Some Africans believe that souls at death pass into the bod- 
ies of apes. Most writers believe the blacks to be savages ; 
nearly all blacks believe the whites to be cannibals. The 
nursery hobgoblin of the one is black, of the other white. 
Without going farther on with these unwise comparisons, 
we must smile at the heaps of nonsense which have been 
written about the negro intellect. When, for greater effect, 
we employ broken English, and use silly phrases as if trans- 
lations of remarks, which, ten to one, were never made, we 
have unconsciously caricatured ourselves and not the ne- 
groes ; for it is a curious fact that Europeans almost invari- 
ably begin to speak with natives by adding the letters e and 
o to their words, " Givee me come, me givee you biscuito," 
or "Looko, looko, me wante beero muche." Our sailors be- 
gan thus, though they had never seen blacks before. It 
seemed an innate idea that they could thus suit English to a 
people who all speak a beautiful language, and have no vul- 
gar patois. Owing to the difference of idiom, very few Eu- 



73 TRAVELERS' LINGUISTIC MISTAKES. Chap. III. 

ropeans acquire an accurate knowledge of African tongues 
unless they begin to learn when young. A complaint as to 
the poverty of the language is often only a sure proof of 
the scanty attainments of the complainant, and gross mis- 
takes are often made by the most experienced. We once 
caught a sound like " Syria" as the name of a country on 
the other side of a river. It was "Psidia" and meant only 
the " other side.'''' A grave professor put down in a scien- 
tific work "Kaia" as the native name of a certain lizard. 
Kaia simply means "I don't know!" the answer which he 
received. This name was also applied in equal innocence 
to a range of mountains. Every one can recall mistakes, 
the remembrance of which, in after years, brings a blush to 
his brow. In general, the opinion of an intelligent mission- 
ary who has diligently studied the language is superior to 
that of any traveler. Quite as sensible, if not more perti- 
nent answers will usually be given by Africans to those 
who know their language, as are obtained from our own 
uneducated poor ; and could we but forget that a couple of 
centuries back the ancestors of common people in England 
— probably our own great-great-grandfathers — were as un- 
enlightened as the Africans are now, we might maunder 
away about intellect, and fancy that the tacit inference would 
be drawn that our own is arch-angelic. The low motives 
which often actuate the barbarians do unfortunately bear 
abundant crops of mean actions among servants, and even 
in higher ranks of more civilized people ; but we hope that 
these may decrease in the general improvement of our race 
by the diffusion of true religion. 

Dr. Kirk very properly divides the year into three sea- 
sons, a cold, a hot, and a rainy season. The cold period lasts 
through May, June, and July ; the hot prevails in August, 



Chap. III. SEASONS AT TETTE. 79 

September, and October. The rains may be expected dur- 
ing the remaining months of the year. 

The rainy season of Tette differs a little from that of some 
of the other intertropical regions, the quantity of rain -fall 
being considerably less. It begins in November and ends 
in April. During our first season in that place, only a little 
over nineteen inches of rain fell. In an average year, and 
when the crops are good, the fall amounts to about thirty- 
five inches. On many days it does not rain at all, and rare- 
ly is it wet all day ; some days have merely a passing show- 
er, preceded and followed by hot sunshine; occasionally an 
interval of a week, or even a fortnight, passes without a 
drop of rain, and then the crops suffer from the sun. These 
partial droughts happen in December and January. The 
heat appears to increase to a certain point in the different 
latitudes so as to necessitate a change, by some law similar 
to that which regulates the intense cold in other countries. 
After several days of progressive heat here, on the hottest 
of which the thermometer probably reaches 103° in the 
shade, a break occurs in the weather, and a thunder-storm 
cools the air for a time. At Kuruman, when the thermom- 
eter stood above 84°, rain might be expected ; at Kolobeng, 
the point at which we looked for a storm was 96°. The 
Zambesi is in flood twice in the course of the year; the 
first flood, a partial one, attains its greatest height about the 
end of December or beginning of January ; the second, and 
greatest, occurs after the river inundates the interior, in a 
manner similar to the overflow of the Nile, this rise not 
taking place at Tette until March. The Portuguese say 
that the greatest height which the March floods attain is 
thirty feet at Tette, and this happens only about every 
fourth year; their observations, however, have never been 



80 EEVISIT KEBRABASA. Chap. III. 

very accurate on any thing but ivory, and they have in this 
case trusted to memory alone. The only fluviometer at 
Tette, or any where else on the river, was set up at our 
suggestion ; and the first flood was at its greatest height of 
thirteen feet six inches on the 17th of January, 1859, and 
then gradually fell a few feet, until succeeded by the great- 
er flood of March. The river rises suddenly, the water is 
highly discolored and impure, and there is a four-knot cur- 
rent in many places; but in a day or two after the first 
rush of waters is passed, the current becomes more equally 
spread over the whole bed of the river, and resumes its 
usual rate in the channel, although continuing in flood. 
The Zambesi water at other times is almost chemically 
pure, and the photographer would find that it is nearly as 
good as distilled water for the nitrate of silver bath. 

A third visit to Kebrabasa was made for the purpose of 
ascertaining whether it might be navigable when the Zam- 
besi was in flood, the chief point of interest being of course 
Morumbwa. It was found that the rapids observed in our 
first trip had disappeared, and that while they were smoothed 
over, in a few places the current had increased in strength. 
As the river fell rapidly while we were on the journey, the 
cataract of Morumbwa did not differ materially from what 
it was when discovered. Some fishermen assured us that it 
was not visible when the river was at its fullest, and that 
the current was then not very strong. On this occasion we 
traveled on the right bank, and found it, with the additional 
inconvenience of rain, as rough and fatiguing as the left had 
been. Our progress was impeded by the tall wet grass, and 
dripping boughs, and consequent fever. During the earlier 
part of the journey we came upon a few deserted hamlets 
only ; but at last, in a pleasant valley, we met some of the 



Chap. III. COTTON-SEED NOT NEEDED. gj 

people of the country, who were miserably poor and hun- 
gry. The women were gathering wild fruits in the woods. 
A young man, having consented for two yards of cotton 
cloth to show us a short path to the cataract, led us up a 
steep hill to a village perched on the edge of one of its 
precipices ; a thunder - storm coming on at the time, the 
head man invited us to take shelter in a hut until it had 
passed. Our guide, having informed him of what he knew 
and conceived to be our object, was favored in return with 
a long reply in well-sounding blank verse ; at the end of 
every line, the guide, who listened with deep attention, re- 
sponded with a grunt, which soon became so ludicrous that 
our men burst into a loud laugh. Neither the poet nor the 
responsive guide took the slightest notice of their' rudeness, 
but kept on as energetically as ever to the end. The speech, 
or more probably our bad manners, made some impression 
on our guide, for he declined, although offered double pay, 
to go any farther. 

We brought cotton-seed to Africa, in ignorance that the 
cotton already introduced was equal, if not superior, to the 
common American, and offered it to any of the Portuguese 
and natives who chose to cultivate it ; but, though some 
tried this source of wealth, it was evident that their ideas 
could not soar beyond black ivory, as they call slaves, ele- 
phant's tusks, and a little gold dust. 

A great deal of fever comes in with March and April ; in 
March, if considerable intervals take place between the rainy 
days, and in April always, for then large surfaces of mud 
and decaying vegetation are exposed to the hot sun. In 
general an attack does not continue long, but it pulls one 
down quickly, though when the fever is checked the strength 
, is as quickly restored. It had long been observed that those 

F 



32 AFRICAN FEVER. Chap. III. 

who were stationed for any length of time in one spot, and 
lived sedentary lives, suffered more from fever than others 
who moved about, and had both mind and body occupied ; 
but we could not all go in the small vessel when she made 
her trips, during which the change of place and scenery 
proved so conducive to health ; and some of us were obliged 
to remain in charge of the expedition's property, making 
occasional branch trips to examine objects of interest in the 
vicinity. Whatever may be the cause of the fever, we ob- 
served that all were often affected at the same time, as if 
from malaria. This was particularly the case during a north 
wind: it was at first commonly believed that a daily dose 
of quinine would prevent the attack. For a number of 
months, all our men, except two, took quinine regularly 
every morning. The fever sometimes attacked the believers 
in quinine, while the unbelievers in its prophylactic pow- 
ers escaped. Whether we took it daily, or omitted it alto- 
gether for months, made no difference ; the fever was im- 
partial, and seized us on the days of quinine as regularly 
and as severely as when it remained undisturbed in the 
medicine -chest, and we finally abandoned the use of it as a 
prophylactic altogether. The best preventive against fever 
is plenty of interesting work to do, and abundance of whole- 
some food to eat. To a man well housed and clothed, who 
enjoys these advantages, the fever at Tette will not prove a 
more formidable enemy than a common cold ; but let one 
of these be wanting — let him be indolent, or guilty of ex- 
cesses in eating or drinking, or have poor, scanty fare, and 
the fever will probably become a more serious matter. It 
is of a milder type at Tette than at Quillimane or on the 
low sea-coast ; and, as in this part of Africa one is as liable 
to fever as to colds in England, it would be advisable for 



Chap. in. METHOD OF TREATMENT. g3 

strangers always to hasten from trie coast to trie higher 
lands, in order that when the seizure does take place, it may 
be of the mildest type. This having been pointed out by 
Dr. Kirk, the Portuguese authorities afterward took the hint, 
and sent the next detachment of soldiers at once up to 
Tette. It consisted of eighty men, and, in spite of the ir- 
regularities committed, most of them being of the class term- 
ed "incorrigibles," in three years only ten died, and but five 
of fever. Although quinine was not found to be a prevent- 
ive, except possibly in the way of acting as a tonic, and 
rendering the system more able to resist the influence of 
malaria, it was found invaluable in the cure of the com- 
plaint, as soon as pains in the back, sore bones, headache, 
yawning, quick and sometimes intermittent pulse, noticea- 
ble pulsations of the jugulars, with suffused eyes, hot skin, 
and foul tongue, began.* 

Yery curious are the effects of African fever on certain 
minds. Cheerfulness vanishes, and the whole mental hori- 
zon is overcast with black clouds of gloom and sadness. 

* A remedy composed of from six to eight grains of resin of jalap, the same 
of rhubarb, and three each of calomel and quinine, made up into four pills, 
with tincture of cardamoms, usually relieved all the symptoms in five or six 
hours. Four pills are a full dose for a man — one will suffice for a woman. 
They received from our men the name of "rousers," from their efficacy in 
rousing up even those most prostrated. When their operation is delayed, a 
desert-spoonful of Epsom salts should be given. Quinine after or during the 
operation of the pills, in large doses every two or three hours, until deafness 
or cinchonism ensued, completed the cure. The only cases in which we found 
ourselves completely helpless were those in which obstinate vomiting ensued. 
We had received from Viscount Torrington a handsome supply of "War- 
burgh's fever drops," a medicine much esteemed in India; and, in considera- 
tion of his lordship's kindness in furnishing the drug at a considerable expense, 
as well as from a desire to find out a remedy that might be relied on for this 
formidable disease, we gave it as fair a trial as was in our power. In the 
shivering stage it caused warmth, but did not cure. . One old man seemed 
cured, but died a day or two afterward. We regret that we can not recom- 
mend it for Africa, though we know of its high repute in India. 



34 MENTAL EFFECTS OF FEVER. Chap. III. 

The liveliest joke can not provoke even the semblance of a 
smile. The countenance is grave, the eyes suffused, and the 
few utterances are made in the piping voice of a wailing 
infant. An irritable temper is often the first symptom of 
approaching fever. At such times a man feels very much 
like a fool, if he does not act like one. Nothing is right, 
nothing pleases the fever-stricken victim. He is peevish, 
prone to find fault and to contradict, and think himself 
insulted, and is exactly what an Irish naval surgeon before 
a court-martial defined a drunken man to be : "a man unfit 
for society." If a party were all soaked full of malaria at 
once, the life of the leader of the expedition would be made 
a burden to him. One might come with lengthened visage, 
and urge as a good reason for his despair, if farther progress 
were attempted, that "he had broken the photograph of his 
wife;" another, "that his proper position was unjustly with- 
held because special search was not directed toward ' the ten 
lost tribes.'" It is dangerous to rally such a one, for the 
irate companion may quote Scripture, and point to their 
habitat "beyond the rivers of Ethiopia." When a man be- 
gins to feel that every thing is meant to his prejudice, he 
either takes a dose of "rousers," or writes to the newspa- 
pers, according to the amount of sense with which nature 
has endowed him. 

Finding that it was impossible to take our steamer of only 
ten-horse power through Kebrabasa, and convinced that, in 
order to force a passage when the river was in flood, much 
greater power was required, due information was forwarded 
to her majesty's government, and application made for a 
more suitable vessel. Our attention was in the mean time 
turned to the exploration of the Eiver Shire, a northern 
tributary of the Zambesi, which joins it about a hundred 



Chap. III. EXPLORATION OF THE SHIRE. 35 

miles from the sea. We could learn nothing satisfactory 
from the Portuguese regarding this affluent; no one, they 
said, had ever been up it, nor could they tell whence it 
came. Years ago a Portuguese expedition is said, however, 
to have attempted the ascent, but to have abandoned it 
on account of the impenetrable duckweed {Pistia stratiotes). 
Many asserted, on the strength of this, that not even canoes 
could force their way through the masses of aquatic plants 
that covered its surface. Others, however, hinted in a pri- 
vate way that it was not the duckweed which drove back 
the expedition, but the poisoned arrows by which the hos- 
tile natives repulsed the Portuguese with heavy loss. ISTo 
one sent native traders up the Shire, nor had intercourse 
with the treacherous savages who lived on its banks. A 
merchant of Senna told us that he once fitted out a trading 
party which went a short distance up the river, but the 
men of it were robbed and barely escaped with their lives. 
"Our government," said one commandant, "has sent us or- 
ders to assist and protect you, but you go where we dare 
not follow, and how can we protect you ?" We could not 
learn from any record that the Shire had ever been ascended 
by Europeans. As far, therefore, as we are concerned, the 
exploration was absolutely new. All the Portuguese be- 
lieved the Manganja to be brave but bloodthirsty savages; 
and on our return we found that soon after our departure a 
report was widely spread that our temerity had been fol- 
lowed by fatal results, Dr. Livingstone having been shot, and 
Dr. Kirk mortally wounded by poisoned arrows. 

Onr first trip to the Shire was in January, 1859. A con- 
siderable quantity of duckweed floated down the river for 
the first twenty -five miles, but not sufficient to interrupt 
navigation with canoes or with any other craft. Nearly 



36 INTERVIEW WITH TINGANE. Chap. III. 

the whole of this aquatic plant proceeds from a marsh on 
the west, and comes into the river a little beyond a lofty 
hill called Mount Morambala, Above that there is hardly 
any. As we approached the villages the natives collected 
in large numbers, armed with bows and poisoned arrows: 
and some, dodging behind trees, were observed taking aim, 
as if on the point of shooting. All the women had been 
sent out of the way, and the men were evidently prepared 
to resist aggression. At the village of a chief named Tin- 
gane, at least five hundred natives collected and ordered us 
to stop. Dr. Livingstone went ashore ; and on his explain- 
ing that we were English, and had come neither to take 
slaves nor to fight, but only to open a path by which our 
countrymen might follow to purchase cotton, or whatever 
else they might have to sell, except slaves, Tingane became 
at once quite friendly. The presence of the steamer, which 
showed that they had an entirely new people to deal with, 
probably contributed to this result; for Tingane was noto- 
rious for being the barrier to all intercourse between the 
Portuguese black traders and the natives farther inland ; 
none were allowed to pass him either way. He was an 
elderly, well-made man, gray-headed, and over six feet high. 
Though somewhat excited by our presence, he readily com- 
plied with the request to call his people together, in order 
that all might know what our objects were. 

In commencing intercourse with any people, we almost 
always referred to the English detestation of slavery. Most 
of them already possess some information respecting the ef- 
forts made by the English at sea to suppress the slave- 
trade; and our work being to induce them to raise and 
sell cotton, instead of capturing and selling their fellow-men, 
our errand appears quite natural ; and as they all have clear 



Chap. III. STATE OF KELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. 37 

ideas of their own self-interest, and are keen traders, the 
reasonableness of the proposal is at once admitted ; and as 
a belief in a Supreme Being, the Maker and Ruler of all 
things, and in the continued existence of departed spirits, 
is universal, it becomes quite appropriate to explain that 
we possess a Book containing a revelation of the will of 
Him to whom, in their natural state, they recognize no re- 
lationship. The fact that His Son appeared among men, 
and left His words in His Book, always awakens attention ; 
but the great difficulty is to make them feel that they have 
any relationship to Him, and that He feels any interest in 
them. The numbness of moral perception exhibited is often 
discouraging ; but the mode of communication, either by 
interpreters, or by the imperfect knowledge of the language, 
which not even missionaries of talent can overcome save 
by the labor of many years, may in part account for the 
phenomenon. However, the idea of the Father of all being 
displeased with His children for selling or killing each 
other, at once gains their ready assent : it harmonizes so 
exactly with their own ideas of right and wrong. But, as 
in our own case at home, nothing less than the instruction 
and example of many years will secure their moral ele- 
vation. 

The dialect spoken here closely resembles that used at 
Senna and Tette. We understood it at first only enough to 
know whether our interpreter was saying what we bade 
him, or was indulging in his own version. After stating 
pretty nearly what he was told, he had an inveterate tend- 
ency to wind up with " The Book says you are to grow 
cotton, and the English are to come and buy it," or with 
some joke of his own, which might have been ludicrous had 
it not been seriously distressing. 



88 MUKCHISON CATARACTS. Chap. III. 

In the first ascent of the Shire our attention was chiefly 
directed to the river itself. The delight of threading out 
the meanderings of upward of 200 miles of a hitherto unex- 
plored river must be felt to be appreciated. All the lower 
part of the river was found to be at least two fathoms in 
depth. It became shallower higher up, where many depart- 
ing and re-entering branches diminished the volume of wa- 
ter, but the absence of sand-banks made it easy of naviga- 
tion. We had to exercise the greatest care lest any thing 
we did should be misconstrued by the crowds who watched 
us. After having made, in a straight line, one hundred 
miles, although the windings of the river had fully doubled 
the distance, we found farther progress with the steamer ar- 
rested, in 15° 55' south, by magnificent cataracts, which we 
called " The Murchison," after one whose name has already 
a world-wide fame, and whose generous kindness we can 
never repay. The native name of that figured in the wood- 
cut is Mamvira. It is that at which the progress of the 
steamer was first stopped. The angle of descent is much 
smaller than that of the five cataracts above it ; indeed, so 
small as compared with them, that after they were discov- 
ered this was not included in the number. 

A few days were spent here in the hope that there might 
be an opportunity of taking observations for longitude, but 
it rained most of the time, or the sky was overcast. It was 
deemed imprudent to risk a land journey while the natives 
were so very suspicious as to have a strong guard on the 
banks of the river night and day ; the weather also was un- 
favorable. After sending presents and messages to two of 
the chiefs, we returned to Tette. In going down stream our 
progress was rapid, as we were aided by the current. The 
hippopotami never made a mistake, but got out of our way. 



Chap. III. CHARACTER OE CHIBISA. 91 

The crocodiles, not so wise, sometimes rushed with great ve- 
locity at us, thinking that we were some huge animal swim- 
ming. They kept about a foot from the surface, but made 
three well-defined ripples from the feet and body, which 
marked their rapid progress ; raising the head out of the 
water when only a few yards from the expected feast, down 
they went to the bottom like a stone, without touching the 
boat. 

In the middle of March of the same year (1859) we started 
again for a second trip on the Shire. The natives were now 
friendly, and readily sold us rice, fowls, and corn. We en- 
tered into amicable relations with the chief Chibisa, whose 
village was about ten miles below the cataract. He had 
sent two men on our first visit to invite us to drink beer; 
but the steamer was such a terrible apparition to them, that, 
after shouting the invitation, they jumped ashore, and left 
their canoe to drift down the stream. Chibisa was a re- 
markably shrewd man, the very image, save his dark hue, of 
one of our most celebrated London actors, and the most in- 
telligent chief, by far, in this quarter. A great deal of fight- 
ing had fallen to his lot, he said, but it was always others 
who began ; he was invariably in the right, and they alone 
were to blame. He was, moreover, a firm believer in the 
divine right of kings. He was an ordinary man, he said, 
when his father died, and left him the chieftainship ; but di- 
rectly he succeeded to the high office, he was conscious of 
power passing into his head, and down his back; he felt it 
enter, and knew that he was a chief, clothed with authority, 
and possessed of wisdom, and people then began to fear and 
reverence him. He mentioned this as one would a fact of 
natural history, any doubt being quite out of the question. 
His people, too, believed in him, for they bathed in the riv- 



92 TREACHEROUS GUIDES. Chap. Ill 

er without the slightest fear of crocodiles, the chief having 
placed a powerful medicine there, which protected them 
from the bite of these terrible reptiles. 

Leaving the vessel opposite Chibisa's village, Drs. Living- 
stone and Kirk and a number of the Makololo started on 
foot for Lake Shirwa. They traveled in a northerly direc- 
tion over a mountainous country. The people were far from 
being well-disposed to them, and some of their guides tried 
to mislead them, and could not be trusted. Masakasa, a Ma- 
kololo head man, overheard some remarks, which satisfied 
him that the guide was leading them into trouble. He was 
quiet till they reached a lonely spot, when he came up to 
Dr. Livingstone and said, "That fellow is bad; he is taking 
us into mischief; my spear is sharp, and there is no one 
here; shall I cast him into the long grass?"" Had the doc- 
tor given the slightest token of assent, or even kept silence, 
never more would any one have been led by that guide, for 
in a twinkling he would have been where "the wicked cease 
from troubling." It was afterward found that in this case 
there was no treachery at all, but a want of knowledge on 
their part of the language and of the country. They asked 
to be led to "Nyanja Mukulu," or Great Lake, meaning, by 
this, Lake Shirwa ; and the guide took them round a terri- 
bly rough piece of mountainous country, gradually edging 
away toward a long marsh, which, from the numbers of 
those animals we had seen there, we had called the Elephant 
Marsh, but which was really the place known to him by the 
name "Nyanja Mukulu," or Great Lake. Nyanja or ISTyan- 
za means, generally, a marsh, lake, river, or even a mere riv- 
ulet. ' 

The party pushed on at last without guides, or only with 
crazy ones ; for, oddly enough, they were often under great. 



Chap. in. LAKE SHIRWA DISCOVEEED. 93 

obligations to the madmen of the different villages : one of 
these honored them, as they slept in the open air, by dancing 
and singing at their feet the whole night. These poor fel- 
lows sympathized with the explorers, probably in the be- 
lief that they belonged to their own class ; and, uninfluenced 
by the general opinion of their countrymen, they really 
pitied, and took kindly to the strangers, and often guided 
them faithfully from place to place, when no sane man could 
be hired for love or money. 

The bearing of the Manganja at this time was very inde- 
pendent; a striking contrast to the cringing attitude they 
afterward assumed, when the cruel scourge of slave-hunting 
passed over their country. Signals were given from the 
different villages by means of drums, and notes of defiance 
and intimidation were sounded in the travelers' ears by day, 
and occasionally they were kept awake the whole night in 
expectation of an instant attack. Drs. Livingstone and Kirk 
were desirous that nothing should occur to make the natives 
regard them as enemies ; Masakasa, on the other hand, was 
anxious to show what he could do in the way of fighting 
them. 

The perseverance of the party was finally crowned with 
success; for on the 18th of April they discovered Lake Shir- 
wa, a considerable body of bitter water, containing leeches, 
fish, crocodiles, and hippopotami. From having probably no 
outlet, the water is slightly brackish, and it appears to be 
deep, with islands like hills rising out of it. Their point of 
view was at the base of Mount Pirimiti or Mopeu-peu, on 
its S.S.W. side. Thence the prospect northward ended in a 
sea horizon with two small islands in the distance ; a larger 
one y resembling a hill-top and covered with trees, rose more 
in the foreground. Eanges of hills appeared on the east ; 



94 ASPECT OF L^KE SHIKWA. Chap. III. 

and on the west stood Mount Chikala, which seems to be 
connected with the great mountain-mass called Zomba. 

The shore, near which they spent two nights, was covered 
with reeds and papyrus. Wishing to obtain the latitude by 
the natural horizon, they waded into the water some distance 
toward what was reported to be a sand-bank, but were so 
assaulted by leeches they were fain to retreat ; and a woman 
told them that in enticing them into the water the men only 
wanted to kill them. The information gathered was that 
this lake was nothing in size compared to another in the 
north, from which it is separated by only a tongue of land. 
The northern end of Shirwa has not been seen, though it has 
been passed ; the length of the lake may probably be .60 or 
80 miles, and about 20 broad. The height above the sea- is 
1800 feet, and the taste of the water is like a weak solution 
of Epsom salts. The country around is very beautiful, and 
clothed with rich vegetation ; and the waves, at the time they 
were there, breaking and foaming over a rock on the south- 
eastern side, added to the beauty of the picture. Exceeding- 
ly lofty mountains, perhaps 8000 feet above the sea-level, 
stand near the eastern shore. When their lofty steep-sided 
summits appear, some above, some below the clouds, the 
scene is grand. This range is called Milanje; on the west 
stands Mount Zomba, 7000 feet in height, and some twenty 
miles long. 

Their object being rather to gain the confidence of the 
people by degrees than to explore, they considered that they 
had advanced far enough into the country for one trip ; and 
believing that they could secure their end by a repetition of 
their visit, as they had done on the Shire, they decided to 
return to the vessel at Dakanamoio Island ; but, instead of 
returning by the way they came, they passed down south- 



Chap. III. REMEDIES FOR FEVER. 95 

ward close by Mount Chiradzuru, among the relatives of 
Chibisa, and thence by the pass Zedi down to the Shire. 
And it was well that they got to the ship when they did, for 
our excellent quartermaster, John Walker, who had been left 
in charge, had been very ill of fever all the time of their ab- 
sence, while those who had been roughing it for twenty -two 
days on the hills, and sleeping every night, except one, in 
the open air, came back well and hearty. Eowe, his com- 
panion, who had charge of the medicine, had not given him 
any, because he did not know what his illness was. One 
can scarcely mistake the fever if he attends to the symptoms 
already enumerated, or remembers that almost every com- 
plaint in this country is a form of fever, or is modified by 
the malaria. Walker's being a very severe ease, a large 
dose of calomel was at once administered. This sometimes 
relieves when other remedies fail, but the risk of salivation 
must be run. When 20 grains are taken it may cause an 
abundant flow of bile, and a cure be the result. This is 
mentioned not as a course to be followed except when other 
remedies fail, or when jaundice supervenes. We have seen 
a case of this kind cured by a large dose of calomel, when 
a blister put on the pit of the stomach to allay vomiting 
brought out serum as black as porter, as if the blood had 
been impregnated with bile. These hints are given, though 
we believe, as we have before stated, that no Mission or Ex- 
pedition ought to enter the country without a skillful sur- 
geon as an essential part of its staff. 

Quartermaster Walker socfti recovered, though, from the 
long continuance of the fever, his system was very much 
more shaken than it would have been had the medicine 
been administered at once. The Kroomen had, while we 
were away, cut a good supply of wood for steaming, and we 
soon proceeded down the river. 



96 CORROSION OF THE STEAMER'S PLATES. Chap. III. 

The steamer reached Tette on the 23d of June, and, after 
undergoing repairs, proceeded to the Kongone to receive 
provisions from one of H. M, cruisers. We had been very 
abundantly supplied with first-rate stores, but we were un- 
fortunate enough to lose a considerable portion of them, and 
had now to bear the privation as best we could. On the 
way down we purchased a few gigantic cabbages and pump- 
kins at a native village below Mazaro. Our dinners had 
usually consisted of but a. single course ; but we were sur- 
prised the next day by our black cook from Sierra Leone 
bearing in a second course. "What have you got there?" 
was asked in wonder. "A tart, sir." "A tart! of what is 
it made?" "Of cabbages, sir." As we had no sugar, and 
could not " make believe," as in the days of boyhood, we 
did not enjoy the feast that Tom's genius had prepared. 
Her majesty's brig "Persian," Lieutenant Saumarez com- 
manding, called on her way to the Cape, and, though some- 
what short of provisions herself, generously gave us all she 
could spare. We now parted with our Kroomen, as, from 
their inability to march, we could not use them in our land 
journeys. A crew was picked out from the Makololo, who, 
besides being good travelers, could cut wood, work the ship, 
and required only native food. 

While at the Kongone it was found necessary to beach 
the steamer for repairs. She was built of a newly-invented 
sort of steel plates, only a sixteenth of an inch in thickness, 
patented, but unfortunately never tried before. To build an 
exploring ship of untried material was a mistake. Some 
chemical action on this preparation of steel caused a minute 
hole ; from this point, branches like lichens, or the little 
ragged stars we sometimes see in thawing ice, radiated in 
all directions. Small holes went through wherever a bend 



Chap. III. RAINFALL UP THE ZAMBESI. 97 

occurred in these branches. The bottom very soon became 
like a sieve, completely full of minute holes, which leaked 
perpetually. The engineer stopped the larger ones, but the 
vessel was no sooner afloat than new ones broke out. The 
first news of a morning was commonly the unpleasant an- 
nouncement of another leak in the forward compartment, or 
in the middle, which was worse still. 

Frequent showers fell on our way up the Zambesi, in the 
beginning of August. On the 8th we had upward of three 
inches of rain, which large quantity, more than falls in any 
single rainy day during the season at Tette, we owed to 
being near the sea. Sometimes the cabin was nearly flood- 
ed ; for, in addition to the leakage from below, rain poured 
through the roof, and an umbrella had to be used whenever 
we wished to write : the mode of coupling the compart- 
ments, too, was a new one, and the action of the hinder com- 
partment on the middle one pumped up the water of the 
river, and sent it in streams over the floor and lockers, 
where lay the cushions, which did double duty as chairs 
and beds. In trying to form an opinion of the climate, it 
must be recollected that much of the fever, from which we 
suffered, was caused by sleeping on these wet cushions. 
Many of the botanical specimens, laboriously collected and 
carefully prepared by Dr. Kirk, were destroyed, or double 
work imposed, by their accidentally falling into wet places 
in the cabin. 

When lying off an island a few miles below Mazaro, the 

owner of it, Paul, a relative of the rebel Mariano, paid us a 

visit. He had just returned from Mozambique, having, to 

use the common phrase of the country, "arranged" with the 

authorities. He told us that Governor General d' Almeida 

knew nothing of the Kongone, and thought, with others, that 

G 



98 



DESCENDANTS OF THE PORTUGUESE. 



Chap. III. 



the Zambesi entered the sea at Quillimane. His excellency 
had been making inquiries of him respecting the correctness 
of Dr. Livingstone's map in this particular. This is men- 
tioned because lately the Portuguese have seriously attempt- 
ed to show that the Kongone was previously well known 
to their slaves. Paul is of mixed breed, but seems to thrive, 
being the only really fat man of the descendants of the 
Portuguese in East Africa. It is a pity that a certain class 
of diseases, self-induced and inherited, have become so uni- 
versal among half-castes that no conclusion can here be 
drawn as to their permanence as a race. 




Chap. IV. RETURN TO THE SHIRE. 99 



CHAPTEE IV. 

Up the Shire again, August, 1859. — Mount Morambala. — Hot Fountain. — 
Chase by a Buffalo. — Nyanja Pangono, or Little Lake. — Nyanja Mukulu, 
or Great Lake. — Ancient Portuguese geographical Knowledge unavailable. 
— Chikanda-kadze. — Accident from unsuitability of Steamer. — Hippopot- 
amus Traps. — Musquitoes. — Elephants. — View of the Shire Marshes. — 
Birds. — Palm Wine, or Sura. — Salt-making. — Brackish Soil and superior 
Cotton. — Dakanamoio Island.— A loving Hornbill. — Chibisa. — Child sold 
into Slavery. 

About the middle of August, after cutting wood at Sha- 
moara, we again steamed up the Shire, with the intention 
of becoming better acquainted with the people, and making 
another and longer journey on foot to the north of Lake 
Shirwa, in search of Lake ISTyassa, of which we had already 
received some information, under the name Nyinyesi (the 
stars). The Shire is much narrower than the Zambesi, but 
deeper and more easily navigated. It drains a low and ex- 
ceedingly fertile valley of from fifteen to twenty miles in 
breadth. Eanges of wooded hills bound this valley on both 
sides. For the first twenty miles the hills on the left bank 
are close to the river; then comes Morambala, whose name 
means "the lofty watch-tower," a detached mountain 500 
yards from the river's brink, which rises, with steep sides on 
the west, to 4000 feet in height, and is about seven miles in 
length. It is wooded up to the very top, and very beauti- 
ful. The southern end, seen from a distance, has a fine 
gradual slope, and looks as if it might be of easy ascent ; 
but the side which faces the Shire is steep and rocky, es- 
pecially in the upper half. A small village peeps out 



100 HOT FOUNTAIN. Chap. IV. 

about half way up the mountain ; it has a pure and bracing 
atmosphere, and is perched above musquito range. The 
people on the summit have a very different climate and 
vegetation from those of the plains, but they have to spend 
a great portion of their existence amid white fleecy clouds, 
which, in the rainy season, rest daily on the top of their fa- 
vorite mountain. We were kindly treated by these mount- 
aineers on' our first ascent: before our second they were 
nearly all swept away by Mariano. Dr. Kirk found upward 
of thirty species of ferns on this and other mountains, and 
even good-sized tree-ferns, though scarcely a single kind is 
to be met with on the plains. Lemon and orange trees 
grew wild, and pineapples had been planted by the people. 
Many large hornbills, hawks, monkeys, antelopes, and rhinoc- 
eroses found a home and food among the great trees round 
its base. A hot fountain boils up on the plain near the 
north end. It bubbles out of the earth, clear as crystal, at 
two points, or eyes, a few yards apart from each other, and 
sends off a fine flowing stream of hot water. The tempera- 
ture was found to be 174° Fahr., and it boiled an egg in 
about the usual time. Our guide threw in a small branch 
to show us how speedily the Madse-awira (boiling water) 
could kill the leaves. Unluckily lizards and insects did not 
seem to understand the nature of a hot spring, as many of 
their remains were lying at the bottom. A large beetle had 
alighted on the water, and been killed before it had time 
to fold its wings. An incrustation, smelling of sulphur, has 
been deposited by the water on the stones. About a hund- 
red feet from the eye of the fountain the mud is as hot as 
can be borne by the body. In taking a bath there it makes 
the skin perfectly clean, and none of the mud adheres : it is 
strange that the Portuguese do not resort to it for the nu- 



Chap. IV. MOUNT MAKANGA. 101 

merous cutaneous diseases with which they are so often af- 
flicted. 

A few clumps of the palm and acacia trees appear west 
of Morambala, on the rich plain forming the tongue of land 
between the rivers Shire and Zambesi. This is a good place 
for all sorts of game. The Zambesi canoe-men were afraid 
to sleep on it from the idea of lions being there ; they pre- 
ferred to pass the night on an island. Some black men, 
who accompanied us as volunteer workmen from Shupanga, 
called out one evening that a lion stood on the bank. It 
was very dark, and we could only see two sparkling lights, 
said to be the lion's eyes looking at us ; for here, as else- 
where, they have a theory that the lion's eyes always flash 
fire at night. Not being fireflies — as they did not move 
when a shot was fired in their direction — they were proba- 
bly glowworms. 

Beyond Morambala the Shire comes winding through an 
extensive marsh. For many miles to the north a broad sea 
of fresh green grass extends, and is so level that it might be 
used for taking the meridian altitude of the sun. Ten or 
fifteen miles north of Morambala stands the dome-shaped 
mountain Makanga, or Chi-kanda ; several others, with gra- 
nitic-looking peaks, stretch away to the north, and form the 
eastern boundary of the valley ; another range, but of met- 
amorphic rocks, commencing opposite Senna, bounds the 
valley on the west. After steaming through a portion of 
this marsh, we came to a broad belt of palm and other trees, 
crossing the fine plain on the right bank. Marks of large 
game were abundant. Elephants had been feeding on the 
palm nuts, which have a pleasant fruity taste, and are used 
as food by man. Two pythons were observed coiled to- 
gether among the branches of a large tree, and were both 



102 CHASE BY A BUFFALO. Chap. IV. 

shot. The larger of the two, a female, was ten feet long. 
They are harmless, and said to be good eating. The Mako- 
lolo having set fire to the grass where they were cutting 
wood, a solitary buffalo rushed out of the conflagration, and 
made a furious charge at an active young fellow named 
Mantlanyane. Never did his fleet limbs serve him better 
than during the few seconds of his fearful flight before the 
maddened animal. When he reached the bank and sprang 
into the river, the infuriated beast was scarcely six feet be- 
hind him. Toward evening, after the day's labor in wood- 
cutting was over, some of the men went fishing. They fol- 
lowed the common African custom of agitating the water by 
giving it a few sharp strokes with the top of the fishing-rod, 
immediately after throwing in the line, to attract the atten- 
tion of the fish to the bait. Having caught nothing, the 
reason assigned was the same as would have been given in 
England under like circumstances, namely, that "the wind 
made the fish cold, and they would not bite." Many gar- 
dens of maize, pumpkins, and tobacco fringed the marshy 
banks as we went on. They belong to natives of the hills, 
who come down in the dry season, and raise a crop on parts 
at other times flooded. While the crops are growing, large 
quantities of fish are caught, chiefly Clarias capensis and 
Mugil Africanus; they are dried for sale or for future con- 
sumption. 

As we ascended, we passed a deep stream about thirty 
yards wide, flowing in from a body of open water several 
miles broad. Numbers of men were busy at different parts 
of it, filling their canoes with the lotus root, called Nyika, 
which, when boiled or roasted, resembles our chestnuts, and 
is extensively used in Africa as food. Out of this lagoon, 
and by this stream, the chief part of the duckweed of the 



Chap. IV. ABSURD ASSERTIONS OF THE PORTUGUESE. 103 

Shire flows. The lagoon itself is called Nyanja ea Motope 
(Lake of Mud). It is also named Nyanja Pangono (Little 
Lake), while the Elephant Marsh goes by the name of Ny- 
anja Mukulu (Great Lake). It is evident, from the shore- 
line still to be observed on the adjacent hills, that in ancient 
times these were really lakes, and the traditional names thus 
preserved are only another evidence of the general desicca- 
tion which Africa has undergone. No one would believe 
that beyond these little and great Nyanjas Portuguese geo- 
graphical knowledge never extended. But the Viscount Sa 
da Bandeira, in an official letter to the Governor G-eneral of 
Mozambique, in his patriotic anxiety to prove that we did 
not discover Lake Nyassa, actually quotes, as the only in- 
formation the ancient archives of Lisbon can disclose, that 
the people of Senna held commercial intercourse with the 
people on Morambala, and of course, as he avers, must have 
sailed into the little and great marshes or Nyanjas referred 
to above. As if either of these were Lake Nyassa ! The 
Shire cataracts are quite ignored. The great Yictoria Falls 
of Mosi-oa-tunya, we are aware, were quite unknown to the 
Portuguese ; but, until we read his excellency's quotations 
from hearsay reports of some ancient author, we believed that 
the five great Murchison Cataracts, which form a descent of 
1200 feet, only a hundred and fifty miles from Senna, must 
have been known to the old Portuguese, and we still incline 
to the belief that they must have been explored ; but, since 
the discovery was hidden from the rest of the world, it takes 
rank with the explorations of illiterate Africans. It is a 
pity, but the fact is, that the good viscount now feels the 
inconvenience which follows the shortsighted policy of his 
ancestors in geographical matters, as much as his descend- 
ants will feel and lament the present " dog in the manger" 



104 CHIKANDA-KADZE'S VILLAGE. Chap. IV. 

commercial policy of his contemporaries. One of the Jes- 
uits formerly made a business-like proposal to explore Lake 
Maravi, but nowhere is it stated that it ever was carried into 
effect. This, we regret to say, is all the information we have 
been able to gain on this subject from the Portuguese. If 
we had been able to discover more particulars of their explo- 
rations, we certainly are not conscious of a desire to dwarf 
them. 

Late in the afternoon of the first day's steaming, after we 
left the wooding-place, we called at the village of Chikanda- 
Kadze, a female chief, to purchase rice for our men ; but we 
were now in the blissful region where time is absolutely of 
no account, and where men may sit down and rest them- 
selves when tired ; so they requested us to wait till next 
day, and they would sell us some food. As our forty black 
men, however, had nothing to cook for supper, we were 
obliged to steam on to reach a village a few miles above. 
When we meet those who care not whether we purchase or 
let it alone, or who think men ought only to be in a hurry 
when fleeing from an enemy, our ideas about time being 
money, and the power of the purse, receive a shock. The 
state of eager competition, which in England wears out both 
mind and body, and makes life bitter, is here happily un- 
known. The cultivated spots are mere dots compared to 
the broad fields of rich soil which are never either grazed or 
tilled. Pity that the plenty in store for all, from our Fa- 
ther's bountiful hands, is not enjoyed by more. 

The wretched little steamer could not carry all the hands 
we needed ; so, to lighten her, we put some into the boats 
and towed them astern. In the dark one of the boats was 
capsized; but all in it, except one poor fellow who could 
not swim, were picked up. His loss threw a gloom over us 



Chap. IV. NATIVE MINSTREL'S VISIT. 105 

all, and added to the chagrin we often felt at having been so 
ill-served in our sorry craft by one of our own countrymen. 
Few would have acted thus toward us : we had received the 
assurance that the steamer would carry from ten to twelve 
tons, and about thirty-six men - x but we found that this made 
her draw so much as to be near sinking, and we adopted the 
expedient mentioned, with the unfortunate result described. 
Next day we arrived at the village of Mboma (16° 56' 30" 
S.), where the people raised large quantities of rice, and were 
eager traders; the rice was sold at wonderfully low rates, and 
we could not purchase a tithe of the food brought for sale. 




African Fiddle of one String. . 

A native minstrel serenaded us in the evening, playing 
several quaint tunes on a species of one-stringed fiddle, ac- 
companied by wild, but not unmusical songs. He told the 
Makololo that he intended to play all night to induce us to 
give him a present. The nights being cold, the thermome- 
ter falling to 47°, with occasional fogs, he was asked if he 
was not afraid of perishing from cold; but, with the genuine 
spirit of an Italian organ-grinder, he replied, "Oh no; I shall 
spend the night with my white comrades in the big canoe ; 
I have often heard of the white men, but have never seen 



106 TRAPPING HIPPOPOTAMI. Chap. IV. 

them till now, and I must sing and play well to them." A 
small piece of cloth, however, bought him off, and he moved 
away in good humor. The water of the river was 70° at 
sunrise, which was 23° warmer than the air at the time, and 
this caused fogs, which rose like steam off the river. When 
this is the case, cold bathing in the mornings at this time of 
the year is improper, for, instead of a glow on coming out, 
one is apt to get a chill, the air being so much colder than 
the water. 

A range of hills, commencing opposite Senna, comes to 
within two or three miles of Mboma village, and then -runs 
in a northwesterly direction ; the principal hill is named 
Malawe ; a number of villages stand on its tree - covered 
sides, and coal is found cropping out in the rocks. The 
country improves as we ascend, the rich valley becoming 
less swampy, and adorned with a number of trees. 

Both banks are dotted with hippopotamus traps over every 
track which these animals have made in going up out of the 
water to graze. The hippopotamus feeds on grass alone, and, 
where there is any danger, only at night. Its enormous lips 
act like a mowing machine, and form a path of short-cropped 
grass as it feeds. We never saw it eat aquatic plants or 
reeds. The tusks seem weapons of both offense and defense. 
The hippopotamus trap consists of a beam five or six feet 
long, armed with a spear-head or hard-wood spike, covered 
with poison, and suspended to a forked pole by a cord, which, 
coming down to the path, is held by a catch, to be set free 
when the beast treads on it. Being wary brutes, they are 
still very numerous. One got frightened by the ship as she 
was steaming close to the bank. In its eager hurry to es- 
cape it rushed on shore, and ran directly under a trap, when 
down came the heavy beam on its back, driving the poisoned 



Chap. IV. 



LEAKY STATE OF THE STEAMER. 



107 



spear-head a foot deep into its flesh. In its agony it plunged 
back into the river, to die in a few hours, and afterward fur- 
nished a feast for the natives. The poison on the spear-head 
does not affect the meat, except the part around the wound, 
and that is thrown away. In some places the descending 
beam is weighted with heavy stones, but here the hard heavy 
wood is sufficient 




' Steamer, Traps, and dead Hippopotamus. 

About dusk we were hailed from the bank by an authori- 
tative voice. "Where are you going to? Where are you 
going to? What is all this journeying about?" "You may 
sleep there, so do not trouble yourself," was the answer re- 
turned by the Makololo. 

" She is leaking worse than ever forward, sir, and there is 
a foot of water in the hold," was our first salutation on the 
morning of the 20th. But we have become accustomed to 
these things now, and are not surprised to hear of a new 



108 ANNOYANCE FROM MUSQUITOES. Chap. IV. 

"cataclysm" at any time. The cabin floor is always wet, 
and one is obliged to mop up the water many times a day, 
giving some countenance to the native idea that English- 
men live in or on the water, and have no houses but ships. 
The cabin is now a favorite breeding-place for musquitoes, 
and we have to support both the ship-bred and shore-bred 
bloodsuckers, of which several species show us their irrita- 
ting attentions. A large brown sort, called by the Portu- 
guese mansos (tame), flies straight to its victim, and goes to 
work at once, as though it were an invited guest. Some of 
the small kinds carry uncommonly sharp lancets and very 
potent poison. " What would these insects eat if we did not 
pass this way ?" becomes a natural question. 

The juices of plants, and decaying vegetable matter in the 
mud, probably form the natural food of musquitoes, and 
blood is not necessary for their existence. They appear so 
commonly at malarious spots that their presence may be 
taken as a hint to man to be off to more healthy localities. 
None appear on the high lands. On the low lands they 
swarm in myriads. The females alone are furnished with 
the biting apparatus, and their number appears to be out of 
all proportion in excess of the males. At anchor, on a still 
evening, they were excessively annoying, and the sooner we 
took refuge under our musquito curtains the better. The 
miserable and sleepless night that only one musquito inside 
the curtain can cause is so well known, and has been so often 
described, that it is needless to describe it here. One soon 
learns, from experience, that to beat out the curtains thor- 
oughly before entering them, so that not one of these pests 
can possibly be harbored within, is the only safeguard against 
such severe trials to one's tranquillity and temper. 

A few miles above Mboma we came again to the village 



Chap. IV. THE ELEPHANT MARSH. 109 

(16° 44' 30" S.) of the chief Tingane, the beat of whose war- 
drums can speedily muster some hundreds of armed men. 
The bows and poisoned arrows here are of superior work- 
manship to those below. Mariano's slave - hunting parties 
stood in great awe of these barbed arrows, and long kept 
aloof from Tingane's villages. His people were friendly 
enough with us now, and covered the banks with a variety 
of articles for sale. The majestic mountain Pirone, to which 
we have given the name of Mount Clarendon, now looms in 
sight, and farther to the N.W. the southern end of the grand 
Milanje range rises in the form of an unfinished sphinx, look- 
ing down on Lake Shirwa. The Euo (16° 31' 0" S.) is said 
to have its source in the Milanje Mountains, and flows to the 
S.W., to join the Shire some distance above Tingane's. A 
short way beyond the Euo lies the Elephant Marsh, or Ny- 
anja Mukulu, which is frequented by vast herds of these ani- 
mals. "We believe that we counted eight hundred elephants 
in sight at once. In the choice of such a strong-hold they 
have shown their usual sagacity, for no hunter can get near 
them through the swamps. They now keep far from the 
steamer; but when she first came up, we steamed into the 
midst of a herd, and some were shot from the ship's deck. 
A single lesson was sufficient to teach them that the puffing 
monster was a thing to be avoided ; and at the first glimpse 
they are now off two or three miles to the midst of the 
marsh, which is furrowed in every direction by wandering 
branches of the Shire. A fine young elephant was here 
caught alive, as he was climbing up the bank to follow his 
retreating dam. When laid hold of, he screamed with so 
much energy that, to escape a visit from the enraged mother, 
we steamed off, and dragged him through the water by the 
proboscis. As the men were holding his trunk over the 



HO YOUNG ELEPHANT CAPTURED. Chap. IV. 

gunwale, Monga, a brave Makololo elephant-hunter, rushed 
aft, and drew his knife across it in a sort of frenzy peculiar 
to the chase. The wound was skillfully sewed up, and the 
young animal soon became quite tame, but, unfortunately, 
the breathing prevented the cut from healing, and he died in 
a few days after from loss of blood. Had he lived, and had 
we been able to bring him home, he would have been the 
first African elephant ever seen in England. The African 
male elephant is from ten to a little over eleven feet in 
height, and differs from the Asiatic species, more particularly 
in the convex shape of his forehead and the enormous size 
of his ears. In Asia many of the males, and all the females, 
are without tusks, but in Africa both sexes are provided with 
these weapons. The enamel in the molar teeth is arranged 
differently in the two species. By an admirable provision, 
new teeth constantly come up at the part where, in man, the 
wisdom teeth appear, and these push the others along, and 
out at the front end of the jaws, thus keeping the molars 
sound by renewal, till the animal attains a very great age. 
The tusks of animals from dry rocky countries are very 
much more dense and heavier than those from wet and 
marshy districts, but the latter attain much the larger size. 

The Shire marshes support prodigious numbers of many 
kinds of water -fowl. An hour at the mast-head unfolds 
novel views of life in an African marsh. Near the edge, 
and on the branches of some favorite tree, rest scores of plo- 
tuses and cormorants, which stretch their snake-like necks, 
and in mute amazement turn one eye and then another to- 
ward the approaching monster. By-and-by the timid ones 
begin to fly off, or take " headers" into the stream ; but a 
few of the bolder, or more composed, remain, only taking 
the precaution to spread their wings ready for instant flight. 



Chap. IV. PRODIGIOUS NUMBER OF WATER-FOWL. HI 

The pretty ardetta {Herodias bubukus), of a light yellow col- 
or when at rest, but seemingly of a pure white when flying, 
takes wing, and sweeps across the green grass in large num- 
bers, often showing us where buffaloes and elephants are by 
perching on their backs. Flocks of ducks, of which the kind 
called "Soriri" (Dendrocygna per sonata) is most abundant, be- 
ing night feeders, meditate quietly by the small lagoons until 
startled by the noise of the steam machinery. Pelicans glide 
over the water, catching fish, while the scopus (Scopus um- 
bretta) and large herons peer intently into pools. The large 
black and white spur-winged goose (a constant marauder of 
native gardens) springs up, and circles round to find out 
what the disturbance can be, and then settles down again 
with a splash. Hundreds of linongolos (Anastomus lamelli- 
gerus) rise on the wing from the clumps of reeds or low trees 
(the Mschinomena, from which pith hats are made), on which 
they build in colonies, and are speedily high in mid -air. 
Charming little red and yellow weavers (Ploceidoz) remind 
one of butterflies as they fly in and out of the tall grass, or 
hang to the mouths of their pendent nests, chattering briskly 
to their mates within. These weavers seem to have "cock 
nests," built with only a roof, and a perch beneath, with a 
doorway on each side. The natives- say they are made to 
protect the bird from the rain. Though her husband is very 
attentive, we have seen the hen-bird tearing her mate's nest 
to pieces, but why we can not tell. Kites and vultures are 
busy overhead, beating the ground for their repast of car- 
rion ; and the solemn -looking, stately - stepping marabout, 
with a taste for dead fish or men, stalks slowly along the 
almost stagnant channels. Groups of men and boys are 
searching diligently in various places for lotus and other 
roots. Some are standing in canoes, on the weed -covered 




Fish-basket. 



112 PALM-TREE FOREST. Chap. IV. 

ponds, spearing fish, while others are punting over the small 
intersecting streams to examine their sunken fish-baskets. 

Toward evening, hundreds of 
pretty little hawks (Erythropus 
vespertinus) are seen flying in a 
southerly direction, and feeding 
on dragon-flies and locusts. They 
come, apparently, from resting on 
the palm-trees during the heat of the day. Flocks of scis- 
sor-bills {Rhyncops) are then also on the wing, and in search 
of food, plowing the water with their lower mandibles, which 
are nearly half an inch longer than the upper ones. 

At the northeastern end of the marsh, and about three 
miles from the river, commences a great forest of palm-trees 
(Borassus JEthiopium). It extends many miles, and at one 
point comes close to the river. The gray trunks and green 
tops of this immense mass of trees give a pleasing tone of 
color to the view. The mountain range, which rises close 
behind the palms, is generally of a cheerful green, and has 
many trees, with patches of a lighter tint among them, as if 
spots of land had once been cultivated. The sharp angular 
rocks and dells on its sides have the appearance of a huge 
crystal broken ; and this is so often the case in Africa, that 
one can guess pretty nearly at sight whether a range is of 
the old crystalline rocks or not. The Borassus, though not 
an oil-bearing palm, is a useful tree. The fibrous pulp round 
the large nuts is of a sweet, fruity taste, and is eaten by men 
and elephants. The natives bury the nuts until the kernels 
begin to sprout ; when dug up and broken, the inside resem- 
bles coarse potatoes, and is prized in times of scarcity as nu- 
tritious food. During several months of the year, palm wine, 
or sura, is obtained in large quantities; when fresh, it is a 



Chap. IV. PALM WINE— SALT. 113 

pleasant drink somewhat like Champagne, and not at all in- 
toxicating ; though, after standing a few hours, it becomes 
highly so. Sticks a foot long are driven into notches in the 
hard outside of the tree — the inside being soft or hollow— 
to serve as a ladder ; the top of the fruit-shoot is cut off, 
and the sap, pouring out at the fresh wound, is caught in an 
earthen pot, which is hung at the point. A thin slice is 
taken off the end, to open the pores, and make the juice flow 
every time the owner ascends to empty the pot. Tempo- 
rary huts are erected in the forest, and men and boys remain 
by their respective trees day and night, the nuts, fish, and 
wine being their sole food. The Portuguese use the palm 
wine as yeast, and it makes bread so light that it melts in 
the mouth like froth. 

Beyond the marsh the country is higher and has a much 
larger population. We passed a long line of temporary huts 
on a plain on the right bank, with crowds of men and wom- 
en hard at work making salt. They obtain it by mixing the 
earth, which is here highly saline, with water, in a pot with 
a small hole in it, and then evaporating the liquid, which 
runs through, in the sun. From the number of women we 
saw carrying it off in bags, we concluded that vast quantities 
must be made at these works. It is worth observing that 
on soils like this, containing salt, the cotton is of larger and 
finer staple than elsewhere. We saw large tracts of this 
rich brackish soil both in the Shire and Zambesi valleys, and 
hence, probably, sea-island cotton would do well ; a single 
plant of it, reared by Major Sicard, flourished and produced 
the long staple and peculiar tinge of this celebrated variety, 
though planted only in the street at Tette ; and there also a 
salt efflorescence appears, probably from decomposition of 
the rock, off which the people scrape it for use. 

H 



114 DAKANAMOIO ISLAND. Chap. IV. 

Above the palm-trees a succession of rich, low islands stud 
the river. Many of them are cultivated, and grow maize at 
all times of the year, for we saw it in different stages of 
growth ; some patches ripe, and others half grown, or just 
sprouting out of the ground. The shores are adorned with 
rows of banana-trees, and the fruit is abundant and cheap. 
Many of the reedy banks are so intertwined with convol- 
vulus and other creepers as to be absolutely impenetrable. 
They are beautiful to the eye, a smooth wall of living green 
rising out of the crystal water, and adorned with lovely 
flowers ; but so dense, that, if capsized in the water, one 
could scarcely pass through to land. 

The large village of the chief Mankokwe occupies a site 
on the right bank ; he owns a number of fertile islands, and 
is said to be the Eundo, or paramount chief of a large dis- 
trict. Being of an unhappy, suspicious disposition, he would 
not see us ; so we thought it best to move on rather than 
spend time in seeking his favor. 

On the 25th of August we reached Dakanamoio Island, 
opposite the perpendicular bluff on which Chibisa's village 
stands ; he had gone, with most of his people, to live near 
the Zambesi, but his head man was civil, and promised us 
guides and whatever else we needed. A few of the men 
were busy cleaning, sorting, spinning, and weaving cotton. 
This is a common sight in nearly every village, and each 
family appears to have its. patch of cotton, as our own ances- 
tors in Scotland had each his patch of flax. Near sunset an 
immense flock of the largest species of hornbill (Buceros cris- 
tatus) came here to roost on the great trees which skirt the 
edge of the cliff. They leave early in the morning, often 
before sunrise, for their feeding -places, coming and going 
in pairs. They are evidently of a loving disposition, and 



Chap. IV. CHIBISA'S LOST CHILD. 115 

strongly attached to each other, the male always nestling- 
close beside his mate. A fine male fell to the ground, from 
fear, at the report of Dr. Kirk's gun ; it was caught and kept 
on board ; the female did not go off in the mornings to feed 
with the others, but flew round the ship, anxiously trying, 
by her plaintive calls, to induce her beloved one to follow 
her: she came again in the evenings to repeat the invita- 
tions. The poor disconsolate captive soon refused to «at, 
and in five days died of grief, because he could not have her 
company. No internal injury could be detected after death. 
Chibisa and his wife, with a natural show of parental feel- 
ing, had told the doctor, on his previous visit, that a few 
years before some of Chisaka's men had kidnapped and sold 
their little daughter, and that she was now a slave to the 
padre at Tette. On his return to Tette, the doctor tried 
hard to ransom and restore the girl to her parents, and of- 
fered twice the value of a slave ; the padre seemed willing, 
but she could not be found. This padre was better than the 
average men of the country ; and, being always civil and 
obliging, would probably have restored her gratuitously, but 
she had been sold, it might be, to the distant tribe Bazizulu, 
or he could not tell where. Custom had rendered his feel- 
ings callous, and Chibisa had to be told that his child would 
never return. It is this callous state of mind which leads 
some of our own blood to quote Scripture in support of 
slavery. If we could afford to take a backward step in civ- 
ilization, we might find men among ourselves who would in 
like manner prove Mormonism or any other enormity to be 
divine. 



116 SET OUT FOR NYASSA. Chap. V. 



CHAPTER Y. 

Leave the Vessel for Discovery of Lake Nyassa. — Manganja Highlands beau- 
tiful, well wooded, and well watered. — Pasturage. — Style of Introduction to 
the Manganja. — People Agriculturists, and Workers in Iron, Cotton, etc. — 
Foreign and indigenous Cotton. — The Pelele, or Lip-ring. — Possible Use for 
this Ornament. — Beer -drinkers. — Ordeal by Muave. — Mourning for the 
Dead. — Belief in a Supreme Being, — Pamalombe Lakelet. — Chief's Wife 
killed by a Crocodile. — Discovery of Lake Nyassa, 16th of September, 1859 
— Its subsequent Discovery by Dr. Roscher. — The "Goree" or Slave-stick. 
— Several Modes by which the Slave-trade is supplied. — Ajawa. — Mangan- 
ja. — More suspicious than the Zambesi Tribes. — Zimika's lack of Hospital- 
ity. — Fine and bracing Climate. — Great Influence to be gained by a steam 
er on Lake Nyassa. 

We left the ship on the 28th of August, 1859, for the dis- 
covery of Lake Nyassa. Our party numbered forty-two in 
all — four whites, thirty-six Makololo, and two guides. We 
did not actually need so many, either for carriage or defense, 
but took them because we believed that, human nature being 
every where the same, blacks are as ready as whites to take 
advantage of the weak, and are' as civil and respectful to the 
powerful. We armed our men with muskets, which gave 
us influence, although it did not add much to our strength, 
as most of the men had never drawn a trigger, and in any 
conflict would in all probability have been more dangerous 
to us than to the enemy. 

Our path crossed the valley in a northeasterly direction, 
up the course of a beautiful flowing stream. Many of the 
gardens had excellent cotton growing in them. An hour's 
march brought us to the foot of the Manganja Hills, up 
which lay the toilsome road. The vegetation soon changed; 



Chap. V. CHITIMBA'S VILLAGE. 117 

as we rose, bamboos appeared, and new trees and plants 
were met with, which gave such incessant employment to 
Dr. Kirk, that he traveled the distance three times over. 
Kemarkably fine trees, one of which has oil-yielding seeds, 
and belongs to the mahogany family, grow well in the hol- 
lows along the rivulet courses. The ascent became very fa- 
tiguing, and we were glad of a rest. Looking back from an 
elevation of a thousand feet, we beheld a lovely prospect. 
The eye takes in at a glance the valley beneath, and the 
many windings of its silver stream Makubula, or Kubvula, 
from the shady hill-side, where it emerges in foaming haste, 
to where it slowly glides into the tranquil Shire ; then the 
Shire itself is seen for many a mile above and below Chibi- 
sa's, and the great level country beyond, with its numerous 
green woods ; until the prospect, west and northwest, is 
bounded far away by masses of peaked and dome-shaped 
blue mountains, that fringe the highlands of the Maravi 
country. 

After a weary march we halted at Makolongwe, the vil- 
lage of Chitimba. It stands in a woody hollow on the first 
of the three terraces of the Manganja Hills, and, like all other 
Manganja villages, is surrounded by an impenetrable hedge 
of poisonous euphorbia. This tree casts a deep shade, which 
would render it difficult for bowmen to take aim at the vil- 
lagers inside. The grass does not grow beneath it, and this 
may be the reason why it is so universally used, for when 
dry the grass would readily 'convey fire to the huts inside ; 
moreover, the hedge acts as a fender to all flying sparks. 
As strangers are wont to do, we sat down under some fine 
trees near the entrance of the village. A couple of mats, 
made of split reeds, were spread for the white men to sit on ; 
and' the head man brought a seguati, or present, of a small 



118 BARTER WITH THE NATIVES. Chap. V. 

goat and a basket of meal. The full value in beads and cot- 
ton cloth was handed to him in return. He measured the 
cloth, doubled it, and then measured that again. The beads 
were scrutinized ; he had never seen beads of that color be- 
fore, and should like to consult with his comrades before ac- 
cepting them, and this, after repeated examinations and much 
anxious talk, he concluded to do. Meal and peas were then 
brought for sale. A fathom of blue cotton cloth, a full dress 
for man or woman, was produced. Our Makololo head man, 
Sininyane, thinking a part of it was enough for the meal, was 
proceeding to tear it, when Chitimba remarked that it was a 
pity to cut such a nice dress for his wife ; he would rather 
bring more meal. "All right," said Sininyane; "but look, 
the cloth is very wide, so see that the basket which carries 
the meal be wide too, and add a cock to make the meal taste 
nicely." A brisk trade sprang up at once, each being eager 
to obtain as fine things as his neighbor — and all were in 
good humor. Women and girls began to pound and grind 
meal, and men and boys chased the screaming fowls over 
the village until they ran them down. In a few hours the 
market was completely glutted with every sort of native 
food ; the prices, however, rarely fell, as they could easily 
eat what was not sold. 

"We slept under the trees, the air being pleasant, and no 
musquitoes on the hills. According to our usual plan of 
marching, by early dawn our camp was in motion. After a 
cup of coffee and a bit of biscuit, we were on the way. The 
air was deliciously cool, and the path a little easier than that 
of yesterday. We passed a number of vllages, occupying 
picturesque spots among the hills, and in a few hours gained 
the upper terrace, 3000 feet above the level of the sea. The 
plateau lies west of the Milanje Mountains, and its northeast- 



Chap.V. upper shire valley. 119 

ern border slopes down to Lake Shirwa. We were all 
charmed with the splendid country, and looked with never- 
failing delight on its fertile plains, its numerous hills, and 
majestic mountains. In some of the passes we saw bramble- 
berries growing ; and the many other flowers, though of great 
beauty, did not remind us of youth and home like the un- 
gainly thorny bramble -bushes. We were a week in cross- 
ing the highlands in a northerly direction ; then we descend- 
ed into the Upper Shire Valley, which is nearly 1200 feet 
above the level of the sea. This valley is wonderfully fer- 
tile, and supports a large population. After leaving the 
somewhat flat-topped southern portion, the most prominent 
mountain of the Zomba range is Njongone, which has a fine 
stream running past its northern base. We were detained 
at the end of the chain some days by one of our companions 
being laid up with fever. One night we were suddenly 
aroused by buffaloes rushing close by the sick-bed. We 
were encamped by a wood on the border of a marsh, but our 
patient soon recovered, notwithstanding the unfavorable sit- 
uation and the poor accommodation. 

The Manganja country is delightfully well watered. The 
clear, cool, gushing streams are very numerous. Once we 
passed seven fine brooks and a spring in a single hour, and 
this, too, near the close of the dry season. Mount Zomba, 
which is twenty miles long, and from 7000 to 8000 feet high, 
has a beautiful stream flowing through a verdant valley on 
its summit, and running away down into Lake Shirwa. The 
highlands are well wooded, and many trees, admirable for 
their height and timber, grow on the various water-courses. 
"Is this country good for cattle?" we inquired of a Mako- 
lolo herdsman, whose occupation had given him skill in pas- 
'turage. " Truly," he replied, " do you not see abundance of 



120 PARAMOUNT CHIEFS. Chap. V. 

those grasses which the cattle love, and get fat upon ?" Yet 
the people have but few goats, and fewer sheep. With the 
exception of an occasional leopard, there are no beasts of 
prey to disturb domestic animals. Wool-sheep would, with- 
out doubt, thrive on these highlands. The Manganja gener- 
ally live in villages, each of which has its own head man, 
and he may be ruler over several adjacent villages. The 
people are regarded as his children. All the petty chiefs of 
a particular portion of country give a sort of allegiance to a 
paramount chief, called the Eondo, or Eundo. They are 
bound to pay him a small annual tribute, and one of the 
tusks of every elephant killed ; and it is his duty, in turn, to 
assist and protect them when attacked by an enemy. Man- 
kokwe is the Eundo of the southern portion of the high- 
lands ; but he is a besotted character, who never visits nor 
aids them as his father did, and so the tribute is rarely paid. 
Still all acknowledge him as their Eundo, and admit that it 
is wrong in them not to pay the tribute, though wrong in 
him not to help them when in trouble. Part of the Upper 
Shire Valley has a lady paramount, named JSTyango ; and in 
her dominions women rank higher and receive more respect- 
ful treatment than their sisters on the hills. 

The hill chief, Mongazi, called his wife to take charge of a 
present we had given him. She dropped down on her 
knees, clapping her hands in reverence before and after re- 
ceiving our present from his lordly hands. It was painful to 
see the abject manner in which the women of the hill tribes 
knelt beside the path as we passed ; but a great difference 
took place when we got into Ny an go's country. The head 
man of the first of her villages, though told that the people 
of three successive villages had refused to admit us, said 
•'that it made no difference, we might sleep in his." He 



Chap.V. village life. 121 

then asked that his wife also might be allowed to come and 
look at the watch, compass, and other cnriosities. She came 
with other women, and seemed to be a modest and intelli- 
gent person. Her husband always consulted her before con- 
cluding a bargain, and was evidently influenced by her opin- 
ion. The sites of the villages are selected with judgment 
and good taste, as a flowing stream is always near, and shady 
trees grow around. In many cases the trees have been 
planted by the head man himself. The Boalo, or spreading- 
place, is generally at one end of the village ; it is an area of 
twenty or thirty yards, made smooth and neat, near the fa- 
vorite banyan and other trees, which throw a grateful shade 
over it. Here the men sit at various sorts of work during 
the day, and smoke tobacco and bang ; and here, on the clear 
delicious moonlight nights, they sing, dance, and drink beer. 
On entering a village, we proceeded, as all strangers do, at 
once to the Boalo: mats of split reeds or bamboo were usual- 
ly spread for us to sit on. Our guides then told the men 
who might be there who we were, whence we had come, 
whither we wanted to go, and what were our objects. This 
information was duly carried to the chief, who, if a sensible 
man, came at once ; but, if he happened to be timid and sus- 
picious, waited until he had used divination, and his warriors 
had time to come in from outlying hamlets. When he 
makes his appearance, all the people begin to clap their 
hands in unison, and continue doing so till he sits down op- 
posite to us. His counselors take their places beside him. 
He makes a remark or two, and is then silent for a few sec- 
onds. Oar guides then sit down in front of the chief and his 
counselors, and both parties lean forward, looking earnestly 
at each other; the chief repeats a word such as "Ambuiatu" 
(our Father, or master), or "moio" (life), and all clap their 



122 COURT ETIQUETTE. Chap. Y. 

hands. Another word is followed by two claps, a third by 
still more clapping, when each touches the ground with both 
hands placed together. Then all rise, and lean forward with 
measured clap, and sit down again with clap, clap, clap, faint- 
er and still fainter, till the last dies away, or is brought to an 
end by a smart loud clap from the chief. They keep perfect 
time in this species of court etiquette. Our guides now tell 
the chief, often in blank verse, all they have already told his 
people, with the addition perhaps of their own suspicions of 
the visitors. He asks some questions, and then converses 
with us through the guides. Direct communication between 
the chief and the head of the stranger party is not customary. 
In approaching they often ask who is the spokesman, and 
the spokesman of the chief addresses the person indicated 
exclusively. There is no lack of punctilious good manners. 
The accustomed presents are exchanged with civil ceremoni- 
ousness, until our men, wearied and hungry, call out, "En- 
glish do not buy slaves, they buy food," and then the people 
bring meal, maize, fowls, batatas, yams, beans, beer, for sale. 
The Manganja are an industrious race; and, in addition to 
working in iron, cotton, and basket- making, they cultivate 
the soil extensively. All the people of a village turn out to 
labor in the fields. It is no uncommon thing to see men, 
women, and children hard at work, with the baby lying close 
by beneath a shady bush. "When a new piece of woodland 
is to be cleared, they proceed exactly as farmers do in Amer- 
ica. The trees are cut down with their little axes of soft na- 
tive iron ; trunks and branches are piled up and burnt, and 
the ashes spread on the soil. The corn is planted among 
the standing stumps which are left to rot. If grass land is 
to be brought under cultivation, as much tall grass as the 
laborer can conveniently lay hold of is collected together 



Chap. V AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY. 123 

and tied into a knot. He then strikes his hoe round the 
tufts to sever the roots, and, leaving all standing, proceeds 
until the whole ground assumes the appearance of a field 
covered with little shocks of corn in harvest. A short time 
before the rains begin these grass shocks are collected in 
small heaps, covered with earth, and burnt, the ashes and 
burnt soil, being used to fertilize the ground. Large crops 
of the mapira, or Egyptian dura (Holcus sorghum), are raised, 
with millet, beans, and ground-nuts ; also patches of yams, 
rice, pumpkins, cucumbers, cassava, sweet potatoes, tobacco, 
and hemp, or bang (Cannabis sativa). Maize is grown all 
the year round. Cotton is cultivated at almost every vil- 
lage. Three varieties of cotton have been found in the 
country, namely, two foreign and one native. The tonje 
manga, or foreign cotton, the name showing that it has been 
introduced, is of excellent quality, and considered at Man- 
chester to be nearly equal to the best New Orleans. It is 
perennial, but requires replanting once in three years. A 
considerable amount of this variety is grown in the Upper 
and Lower Shire Valleys. Every family of any importance 
owns a cotton patch, which, from the entire absence of weeds, 
seemed to be carefully cultivated. Most were small, none 
seen on this journey exceeding half an acre ; but on the for- 
mer trip some were observed of more than twice that size. 

The tonje cadja, or indigenous cotton, is of shorter -staple, 
and feels in the hand like wool. This kind has to be plant- 
ed every season in the highlands ; yet, because it makes 
stronger cloth, many of the people prefer it to the foreign 
cotton ; the third variety is not found here. It was remark- 
ed to a number of men near the Shire Lakelet, a little farther 
on toward Kyassa, " You should plant plenty of cotton, and 
probably the English will come and buy it." " Truly," re- 



124 



COTTON CULTIVATION. 



Chap. V. 



plied a far-traveled Babisa trader to his fellows, "the country 
is full of cotton, and if these people come to buy they will 
enrich us." Our own observation on the cotton cultivated 
convinced us that this was no empty flourish, but a fact. 
Every where we met with it, and scarcely ever entered a 
village without finding a number of men cleaning, spinning, 
and weaving. It is first carefully separated from the seed 
by the fingers, or by an iron roller, on a little block of wood, 
and rove out into long soft bands without twist. Then it 
receives its first twist on the spindle, and becomes about the 




Native web, and Weaver smoking the huge tobacco-pipe of the country. 

thickness of coarse candlewick ; after being taken off and 
wound into a large ball, it is given the final hard twist, and 
spun into a firm cop on the spindle again, all the processes 
being painfully slow. 

Iron ore is dug out of the hills, and its manufacture is the 



Chap. V. 



NATIVE MANUFACTURES. 



125 



staple trade of the southern highlands. Each village has 
its smelting -house, its charcoal-burners, and blacksmiths. 
They make good axes, spears, needles, arrow-heads, bracelets 
and anklets, which, considering the entire absence of ma- 
chinery, are sold at surprisingly low rates; a hoe over two 
pounds in weight is exchanged for calico of about the value 




Blacksmith's Forge and Bellows of Goatskin. 

of fourpence. In villages near Lake Shirwa and elsewhere, 
the inhabitants enter pretty largely into the manufacture of 
crockery, or pottery, making by hand all sorts of cooking, 
water, and grain pots, which they ornament with plumbago 
found in the hills. Some find employment in weaving neat 
baskets from split bamboos, and others collect the fibre of 
the buaze, which grows abundantly on the hills, and make it 
into fish-nets. These they either use themselves, or ex- 
change with the fishermen on the river or lakes for dried 
fish and salt. A great deal of native trade is carried on be- 
tween the villages by means of barter in tobacco, salt, dried 
Many of the men are intelli gent-look - 



fish, skins, and iron. 



126 HAIR-DRESSING— ORNAMENTS. Chap. V. 

ing, with well-shaped heads, agreeable faces, and high fore- 
heads. We soon learned to forget color, and we frequently 
saw countenances resembling those of white people we had 
known in England, which brought back the looks of forgot- 
ten ones vividly before the mind. The men take a good 
deal of pride in the arrangement of their hair ; the varieties 
of style are endless. One trains his long locks till they take 
the admired form of the buffalo's horns ; others prefer to let 
their hair hang in a thick coil down their backs, like that 
animal's tail; while another wears it in twisted cords, which, 
stiffened by fillets of the inner bark of a tree wound spirally 
round each curl, radiate from the head in all directions. 
Some have it hanging all round the shoulders in large mass- 
es ; others shave it off altogether. Many shave part of it 
into ornamental figures, in which the fancy of the barber 
crops out conspicuously. About as many dandies run to 
seed among the blacks as among the whites. The Manganja 
adorn their bodies extravagantly, wearing rings on their fin- 
gers and thumbs, besides throatlets, bracelets, and anklets of 
brass, copper, or iron. But the most wonderful of orna- 
ments, if such it may be called, is the pelele, or upper -lip 
ring of the women. The middle of the upper lip of the girls 
is pierced close to the septum of the nose, and a small pin 
inserted to prevent the puncture closing up. After it has 
healed, the pin is taken out #nd a larger one is pressed into 
its place, and so on successively for weeks, and months, and 
years. The process of increasing the size of the lip goes on 
till its capacity becomes so great that a ring of two inches 
diameter can be introduced with ease. All the highland 
women wear the pelele, and it is common on the Upper and 
Lower Shire. The poorer classes make them of hollow or 
of solid bamboo, but the wealthier of ivory or tin. The tin 



Chai'. V 



PELELE, OR LIP-RING. 



127 



pelele is often made in the form of a small dish. The ivory 
one is not unlike a napkin-ring. No woman ever appears 




Pelele, or Lip-ring of Manganja Woman. 

in public without the pelele, except in times of mourning for 
the dead. It is frightfully ugly to see the upper lip project- 
ing two inches beyond the tip of the nose. When an old 
wearer of a hollow bamboo ring smiles, by the action of the 
muscles of the cheeks, the ring and lip outside it are dragged 
back and thrown above the eyebrows. The nose is seen 
through the middle of the ring, and the exposed teeth show 
how carefully they have been chipped to look like those of 
a cat or crocodile. The pelele of an old lady, Chikanda 
Kadze, a chieftainess, about twenty miles north of Moramba- 



128 OBJECT OF THE PELELE. Chap. V. 

la, hung down below her chin, with, of course, a piece of the 
upper lip around its border. The labial letters can not be 
properly pronounced, but the under lip has to do its best for 
them against the upper teeth and gum. Tell them it makes 
them ugly ; they had better throw it away ; they reply, 
a Kodi! Keally! it is the fashion." How this hideous fash- 
ion originated is an enigma. Can thick lips ever have been 
thought beautiful, and this mode of artificial enlargement re- 
sorted to in consequence? The constant twiddling of the 
pelele with the tongue by the younger women suggested the 
irreverent idea that it might have been invented to give safe 
employment to that little member. " Why do the women 
wear these things?" we inquired of the old chief, Chinsunse. 
Evidently surprised at such a stupid question, he replied, 
"For beauty, to be sure! Men have beards and whiskers; 
women have none ; and what kind of creature would a wom- 
an be without whiskers, and without the pelele ? She would 
have a mouth, like a man, and no beard; ha! ha! ha!" 
Afterward, on the Eovuma, we found men wearing the pelele 
as well as women. An idea suggested itself on seeing the 
effects of the slight but constant pressure exerted on the up- 
per gum and front teeth, of which our medical brethren will 
judge the value. In many cases the upper front teeth, in- 
stead of the natural curve outward which the row presents, 
had been pressed so as to appear as if the line of alveoli in 
which they were planted had an inward curve. As this was 
produced by the slight pressure of the pelele backward, per- 
sons with too prominent teeth might, by slight but long-con- 
tinued pressure, by some appliance only as elastic as the lip. 
have the upper gum and teeth depressed, especially in youth, 
more easily than is usually imagined. The pressure should 
be applied to the upper gum more than to the teeth. 



Chap. V. INTOXICATION OF THE MANGANJA. 129 

The Manganja are not a sober people; they brew large 
quantities of beer, and like it well. Haying no hops or oth- 
er means of checking fermentation, they are obliged to drink 
the whole brew in a few days, or it becomes unfit for use. 
Great merry-makings take place on these occasions, and 
drinking, drumming, and dancing continue day and night 
till the beer is gone. In crossing the hills we sometimes 
found whole villages enjoying this kind of mirth. The vet- 
eran traveler of the party remarked that he had not seen so 
much drunkenness during all the sixteen years he had spent 
in Africa. As we entered a village one afternoon, not a 
man was to be seen, but some women were drinking beer 
under a tree. In a few moments the native doctor, one of 
the innocents, "nobody's enemy but his own," staggered out 
of a hut, with his cupping-horn dangling from his neck, and 
began to scold us for a breach of etiquette. " Is this the 
way to come into a man's village, without sending him word 
that you are coming?" Our men soon pacified the fuddled 
but good-humored medico, who, entering his beer-cellar, call- 
ed on two of them to help him to carry out a huge pot of 
beer, which he generously presented to us. While the "med- 
ical practitioner" was thus hospitably employed, the chief 
awoke in a fright, and shouted to the women to run away, 
or they would all be killed. The ladies laughed at the idea 
of their being able to run away, and remained beside the 
beer-pots. We selected a spot for our camp, our men cook- 
ed the dinner as usual, and we were quietly eating it, when 
scores of armed men, streaming with perspiration, came pour- 
ing into the village. They looked at us, then at each other, 
and, turning to the chief, upbraided him for so needlessly 
sending for them. "These people are peaceable; they do 
not hurt you; you are killed with beer:" so saying, they re- 
turned to their homes. 

I 



130 NATIVE BEER. Chap. V. 

We remarked the different varieties of intoxication among 
these topers — the talkative, the boisterous, the silly, the stu- 
pid, and the pugnacious ; the last, when the chief, at the head 
of his men, placed himself in front, crying, " I stop this path ; 
you must go back." He sprang aside, however, with more 
speed than dignity when an angry Makololo made a lunge 
at him with the butt of his musket. 

Native beer has a pinkish color and the consistency of 
gruel. The grain is made to vegetate, dried in the sun, 
pounded into meal, and gently boiled. When only a day or 
two old, the beer is sweet, with a slight degree of acidity, 
which renders it a most grateful beverage in a hot climate, 
or when fever begets a sore craving for acid drinks. A sin- 
gle draught of it satisfies this craving at once. Only by 
deep and long-continued potations can intoxication be pro- 
duced ; the grain being in a minutely divided state, it is a 
good way of consuming it, and the decoction is very nutri- 
tious. At Tette a measure of beer is exchanged for an 
equal-sized pot full of grain. A present of this beer, so re- 
freshing to our dark comrades, was brought to us in nearly 
every village. Beer -drinking does not appear to produce 
any disease, or to shorten life, on the hills. Never before 
did we see so many old gray-headed men and women ; lean- 
ing on their staves, they came with the others to see the 
white men. The aged chief, Muata Manga, could hardly 
have been less than ninety years of age ; his venerable ap- 
pearance struck the Makololo. "He is an old man," said 
they, "a very old man; his skin hangs in wrinkles, just like 
that on elephants' hips." "Did }^ou never," he was asked, 
"have a fit of traveling come over you — a desire to see oth- 
er lands and people?" jSTo, he had never felt that, and had 
never been far from home in his life. For long life they are 



Chap. V. CUTANEOUS DISEASES. 131 

not indebted to frequent ablutions. An old man told us 
that he remembered to have washed once in his life, but it 
was so long since that he had forgotten how it felt. "Why- 
do you wash?" asked Chinsunse's women of the Makololo; 
"our men never do." 

On the Upper Shire Valley, a man, after favoring us with 
some queer geographical remarks, followed us for several 
days. The Makololo became very much annoyed with him, 
for he proclaimed in every village we entered, "These peo- 
ple have wandered ; they do not know where they are go- 
ing." In vain did they scold and order him away. As 
soon as we started, he appeared again in the line of march, 
with his little bag over his shoulder, containing all his 
worldly gear, and as ready with his uncalled-for remarks as 
before. Every effort failed to drive him away, until at 
length the happy expedient was hit on of threatening to 
take him down to the river and wash him ; he at once made 
off, and we saw him no more. Much skin disease is seen 
among the Manganja. Many had ulcers on their limbs; in- 
deed, an indolent almost incurable ulcer is the worst com- 
plaint we saw. Some men appeared as if they had blotches 
of whitewash all over them, and some were afflicted with the 
leprosy of the Cape. Many fowls, even, have their feet de- 
formed by a peculiar thickening of the skin. We noticed 
also some men marked with small-pox, and asked the chief, 
Mongazi, if he knew whether it had come to them from the 
coast or from the interior. Being, as usual, amiably tipsy 
and anxious to pay us a compliment, he graciously replied 
he did not know, but thought it must have come to them 
from the English. 

The superstitious ordeal by drinking the poisonous muave 
obtains credit here; and when a person is suspected of crime, 



132 MUAVE ORDEAL. Chap. V. 

this ordeal is resorted to. If the stomach rejects the poison, 
the accused is pronounced innocent; but if it is retained, 
guilt is believed to be demonstrated. Their faith is so firm 
in its discriminating power, that the supposed criminal offers 
of his own accord to drink it, and even chiefs are not ex- 
empted. Chibisa, relying on its efficacy, drank it several 
times in order to vindicate his character. When asserting 
that all his wars had been just, it was hinted that, as every 
chief had the same tale of innocence to tell, we ought to sus- 
pend our judgment. " If you doubt my word," said he, 
"give me the muave to drink." A chief at the foot of 
Mount Zomba successfully went through the ordeal the day 
before we reached his village, and his people manifested 
their joy at his deliverance by drinking beer, dancing, and 
drumming for two days and nights. It is possible that the 
native doctor, who mixes the ingredients of the poisoned 
bowl, may be able to save those whom he considers inno- 
cent; but it is difficult to get the natives to speak about 
the matter, and no one is willing to tell what the muave 
poison consists of. We have been shown trees said to be 
used, but had always reason to doubt the accuracy of our 
informants. We once found a tree in a village, with many 
pieces of the bark chipped off, closely allied to the Tangena 
or Tanghina, the ordeal poison-tree of Madagascar ; but we 
could not ascertain any particulars about it. Death is in- 
flicted on those found guilty of witchcraft, by the muave. 

The women wail for the dead two days. Seated on the 
ground, they chant a few plaintive words, and end each 
verse with the prolonged sound of a — a, or o — o, or ea-ea-ea 
— a. Whatever beer is in the house of the deceased is pour- 
ed out on the ground with the meal, and all cooking and 
water pots are broken, as being of no farther use. Both men 



Chap. V. PAMALOMBE LAKELET. 133 

and women wear signs of mourning for their dead relatives. 
These consist of narrow strips of the palm-leaf wound round 
the head, the arms, legs, neck, and breasts, and worn till they 
drop off from decay. They believe in the existence of a Su- 
preme Being called Mpambe, and also Morungo, and in a 
future state. "We live only a few days here," said old 
Chinsunse, "but we live again after death; we do not know 
where, or in what condition, or with what companions, for 
the dead never return to tell us. Sometimes the dead do 
come back, and appear to us in dreams, but they never speak 
nor tell us where they have gone, nor how they fare." 

Our path followed the Shire above the Cataracts, which is 
now a broad, deep river, with but little current. It expands 
in one place into a lakelet called Pamalombe, full of fine fish, 
and ten or twelve miles long by five or six in breadth. Its 
banks are low, and a dense wall of papyrus encircles it. On 
its western shore rises a range of hills running north. On 
reaching the village of the chief Muana-Moesi, and about a 
day's march distant from Nyassa, we were told that no lake 
had ever been heard of there; that the Eiver Shire stretched 
on as we saw it now to a distance of "two months," and 
then came out from between perpendicular rocks, which 
towered almost to the skies. Our men looked blank at this 
piece of news, and said, " Let us go back to the ship ; it is 
of no use trying to find the lake." " We shall go and see 
those wonderful rocks, at any rate," said the doctor. "And 
when you see them," replied Masakasa, "you will just want 
to see something else." "But there is a lake," rejoined Ma- 
sakasa, "for all their denying it, for it is down in a book." 
Masakasa, having unbounded faith in whatever was in a 
book," went and scolded the natives for telling him an un- 
truth. " There is a lake," said he, " for how could the white 



134 A CROCODILE'S VICTIM. Chap.V. 

men know about it in a book if it did not exist?" They 
then admitted that there was a lake a few miles off. Subse- 
quent inquiries made it probable that the story of the " per- 
pendicular rocks" may have had reference to a fissure, 
known to both natives and Arabs, in the northeastern por- 
tion of the lake. The walls rise so high that the path along 
the bottom is said to be underground. It is probably a 
crack similar to that which made the "Victoria Falls, and 
formed the Shire Valley. 

The chief brought a small present of meal in the evening, 
and sat with us for a few minutes. On leaving us he said 
that he wished we might sleep well. Scarce had he gone 
when a wild sad cry arose from the river, followed by the 
shrieking of women. A crocodile had carried of! his prin- 
cipal wife as she was bathing. The Makololo snatched up 
their arms and rushed to the bank, but it was too late ; she 
was gone. The wailing of the women continued all night, 
and next morning we met others coming to the village to 
join in the general mourning. Their grief was evidently 
heartfelt, as we saw the tears coursing down their cheeks. 
In reporting this misfortune to his neighbors, Muana-Moesi 
said "that white men came to his village; washed them- 
selves at the place where his wife drew water and bathed ; 
rubbed themselves with a white medicine (soap) ; and his 
wife, having gone to bathe afterward, was taken by a croc- 
odile ; he did not know whether in consequence of the med- 
icine used or not." This we could not find fault with. On 
our return we were viewed with awe, and all the men fled 
at our approach ; the women remained ; and this elicited 
the remark from our men, "The women have the advant- 
age of men in not needing to dread the spear." The prac- 
tice of bathing, which our first contact with Chinsunse's peo- 



Chap. V. LAKE NYASSA DISCOVERED. 135 

pie led us to believe was unknown to the natives, we after- 
ward found to be common in other parts of the Manganja 
country. 

We discovered Lake Nyassa a little before noon of the 
16th of September, 1859. Its southern end is in 14° 25' S. 
lat., and 35° 30' E. long. At this point the valley is about 
twelve miles wide. There are hills on both sides of the 
lake, but the haze from burning grass prevented us at the 
time from seeing far. A long time after our return from 
Nyassa we received a letter from Captain K. B. Oldfield, 
E.N., then commanding H.M.S. Lyra, with the information 
that Dr. Koscher, an enterprising German who unfortunately 
lost his life in his zeal for exploration, had also reached the 
lake, but on the 19th of November following our discovery, 
and on his arrival had been informed by the natives that a 
party of white men were at the southern extremity. On 
comparing dates (16th of September and 19th of November), 
we were about two months before Dr. Eoscher. Informa- 
tion to the same effect as Captain Oldfield's was also publish- 
ed in the Cape newspapers in a letter to Sir George Grey, 
the governor, from Colonel Eigby, H.M. Consul and Political 
Eesident at Zanzibar, who derived his information from the 
depositions of Dr. Eoscher's servants after they had reached 
the Coast. 

It is not known where Dr. Eoscher first saw its waters, as 
the exact position of Nusseewa, on the borders of the lake, 
where he lived some time, is unknown. He was three days 
northeast of Nusseewa, and on the Arab road back to the 
usual crossing-place of the Eovuma, when he was murdered. 
The murderers were seized by one of the chiefs, sent to Zan- 
zibar, and executed. He is said to have kept his discoveries 
to himself, with the intention of publishing in Europe the 



136 A SLAVE-PATH. Chap. V. 

whole at once, in a splendid book of travels. Hence we can 
only conjecture that as he traveled on the Arab route from 
Kilwa (Quiloa), he struck the lake at the Arab crossing- 
place Ngombo, adjacent to Tsenga, or possibly opposite Ko- 
takota Bay.* The regular publication of our letters by the 
Eoyal Geographical Society we felt to be an inestimable ben- 
efit. It fixed the date of, and perpetuated every discovery. 

The chief of the village near the confluence of the Lake 
and Eiver Shire, an old man called Mosauka, hearing that 
we were sitting under a tree; came and kindly invited us to 
his village. He took us to a magnificent banyan-tree, of 
which he seemed proud. The roots had been trained down 
to the ground into the form of a gigantic arm-chair without 
the seat. Four of us slept in the space betwixt its arms. 
Mosauka brought us a present of a goat and basket of meal 
"to comfort our hearts." He told us that a large slave-par- 
ty, led by Arabs, were encamped close by. They had been 
up to Cazembe's country the past year, and were on their 
way back, with plenty of slaves, ivory, and malachite. In a 
few minutes half a dozen of the leaders came over to see us. 
They were armed with long muskets, and, to our mind, were 
a villainous-looking lot. They evidently thought the same 
of us, for they offered several young children for sale, but, 
when told that we were English, showed signs of fear, and 
decamped during the night. On our return to the Kongone 
we found that H.M.S. Lynx had caught some of these very 
slaves in a dhow ; for a woman told us she first saw us at 
Mosauka's, and that the Arabs had fled for fear of an uncan- 
ny sort of Basungu. 

This is one of the greatest slave-paths from the interior ; 
others cross the Shire a little below, and some on the lake 

* See Appendix. 



Chap. V- "GOREE," OR SLAVE-STICK. 137 

itself. We might have released these slaves, but did not 
know what to do with them afterward. On meeting men, 
led in slave-sticks, the doctor had to bear the reproaches of 




■Goree," or Slave-stick. 



the Makololo, who never slave ; " Ay, you call us bad, but 
are we yellow - hearted, like these fellows? why won't you 
let us choke them?" To liberate and leave them would 
have done but little good, as the people of the surrounding 
villages would soon have seized them, and have sold them 
again into slavery. The Manganja chiefs sell their own 
people, for we met Ajawa and slave-dealers in several high- 
land villages, who had certainly been encouraged to come 
among them for slaves. The chiefs always seemed ashamed 
of the traffic, and tried to excuse themselves. "We do not 
sell many, and only those who have committed crimes." As 
a rule, the regular trade is supplied by the low and criminal 
classes, and hence the ugliness of slaves. Others are proba- 
bly sold besides criminals, as on the accusation of witchcraft. 
Friendless orphans also sometimes disappear suddenly, and 
no one inquires what has become of them. The temptation 
to sell their people is peculiarly great, as there is but little 
ivory on the hills, and often the chief has nothing but human 
flesh with which to buy foreign goods. The Ajawa offer 
cloth, brass rings, pottery, and sometimes handsome young 
women, and agree to take the trouble of carrying off by 
night all those whom the chief may point out to them. 
They give four yards of cotton cloth for a man, three for a 



138 INHOSPITALITY OF THE MANGANJA. Chap. V. 

woman, and two for a boy or girl, to be taken to the Portu- 
guese at Mozambique, Iboe, and Quillimane. 

Another channel of supply, fed by victims from all classes, 
but chiefly from the common people, is frequently opened, 
when one portion of a tribe, urged on by the greed of gain, 
begins to steal and sell their fellow-clansmen. The evil does 
not stop here. A feud is the consequence. The weaker 
part of the tribe is driven away, and, wandering about, be- 
comes so thoroughly demoralized as to live by marauding 
and selling their captives, and even each other, without com- 
punction. This was precisely the state of the portion of the 
Ajawa we first fell in with. 

The Manganja were more suspicious and less hospitable 
than the tribes on the Zambesi. They were slow to believe 
that our object in coming into their country was really what 
we professed it to be. They naturally judge us by the mo- 
tives which govern themselves. A chief in the Upper Shire 
Valley, whose scared looks led our men to christen him Kit- 
labolawa (I shall be killed), remarked that parties had come 
before with as plausible a story as ours, and, after a few days, 
had jumped up and carried off a number of "his people as 
slaves. We were not allowed to enter some of the villages 
in the valley, nor would the inhabitants even sell us food; 
Zimika's men, for instance, stood at the entrance of the eu- 
phorbia hedge, and declared we should not pass in. We sat 
down under a tree close by. A young fellow made an an- 
gry oration, dancing from side to side with his bow and pois- 
oned arrows, and gesticulating fiercely in our faces. He was 
stopped in the middle of his harangue by an old man, who 
ordered him to sit down, and not talk to strangers in that 
way; he obeyed reluctantly, scowling defiance, and thrust- 
ing out his large lips very significantly. The women were 



Chap. V. APOLOGY OF THE CHIEF. 139 

observed leaving the village ; and, suspecting that mischief 
might ensue, we proceeded on our journey, to the great dis- 
gust of our men. They were very .angry with the natives 
for their want of hospitality to strangers, and with us be- 
cause we would not allow them to give "the things a thrash- 
ing." " This is what comes of going with white men," they 
growled out; "had we been with our own chief, we should 
have eaten their goats to-night, and had some of themselves 
to carry the bundles for us to-morrow." On our return by 
a path which left this village on our right, Zimika sent to 
apologize, saying that " he was ill, and in another village at 
the time ; it was not by his orders that we were sent away ; 
his men did not know that we were a party wishing the 
land to dwell in peace." 

We were not able, when hastening back to the men left 
in the ship, to remain in the villages belonging to this chief; 
but the people came after us with things for sale, and invited 
us to stop and spend the night with them, urging, " Are we 
to have it said that white people passed through our coun- 
try and we did not see them?" We rested by a rivulet to 
gratify these sight -seers. We appear to them to be red 
rather than white ; and, though light color is admired among 
themselves, our clothing renders us uncouth in aspect. Blue 
eyes appear savage, and a red beard hideous. From the 
numbers of aged persons we saw on the highlands, and the 
increase of mental and physical vigor we experienced on 
our ascent from the lowlands, we inferred that the climate 
was salubrious, and that our countrymen might there enjoy 
good health, and also be of signal benefit by leading the 
multitude of industrious inhabitants to cultivate cotton, 
buaze, sugar, and other valuable produce, to exchange for 
goods of European manufacture ; at the same time teaching 



140 THE TRADE OF CAZEMBE. Chap. V. 

them, by precept and example, the great truths of our holy 
religion. 

Our stay at the lake was necessarily short. "We had 
found that the best plan for allaying any suspicions that 
might arise in the minds of a people accustomed only to 
slave-traders was to pay a hasty visit, and then leave for a 
while, and allow the conviction to form among the people 
that, though our course of action was so different from that 
of others, we were not dangerous, but rather disposed to be 
friendly. We had also a party at the vessel, and any indis- 
cretion on their part might have proved fatal to the charac- 
ter of the Expedition. 

The trade of Cazembe and Katanga's country, and of other 
parts of the interior, crosses Nyassa and the Shire, on its way 
to the Arab port, Kilwa and the Portuguese ports of Iboe 
and Mozambique. At present, slaves, ivory, malachite, and 
copper ornaments are the only articles of commerce. Ac- 
cording to information collected by Colonel Eigby at Zanzi- 
bar, and from other sources, nearly all the slaves shipped 
from the above-mentioned ports come from the Nyassa dis- 
trict. By means of a small steamer, purchasing the ivory 
of the lake and river above the cataracts, which together 
have a shore-line of at least 600 miles, the slave-trade in this 
quarter would be rendered unprofitable ; for it is only by 
the ivory being carried by the slaves that the latter do not 
eat up all the profits of a trip. An influence would be ex- 
erted over an enormous area of country, for the Mazitu about 
the north end of the lake wilhnot allow slave-traders to pass 
round that way through their country. They would be most 
efficient allies to the English, and might themselves be ben- 
efited by more intercourse. As things are now, the native 
traders in ivory and malachite have to submit to heavy ex- 



Chap. V. PLAN FOR CHECKING SLAVE-TRADE. 141 

actions ; and if we could give them the same prices which 
they at present get after carrying their merchandise 300 
miles beyond this to the Coast, it might induce them to re- 
turn without going farther. It is only by cutting off the 
supplies in the interior that we can crush the slave-trade on 
the Coast. The plan proposed would stop the slave-trade 
from the Zambesi on one side and Kilwa on the other, and 
would leave, beyond this tract, only the Portuguese port of 
Inhambane on the south, and a portion of the Sultan of Zan- 
zibar's dominion on the north, for our cruisers to look after. 
The Lake people grow abundance of cotton for their own 
consumption, and can sell it for a penny a pound, or even 
less. Water -carriage exists by the Shire and Zambesi all 
the way to England, with the single exception of a portage 
of about thirty -five miles past the Murchison Cataracts, along 
which a road of less than forty miles could be made at a 
trifling expense ; and it seems feasible that a legitimate and 
thriving trade might, in a short time, take the place of the 
present unlawful traffic. 

Colonel Rigby, Captains Wilson, Oldfield, and Chapman, 
and all the most intelligent officers on the Coast, were unani- 
mous in the belief that one small vessel on the lake would 
have decidedly more influence, and do more good in sup- 
pressing the slave-trade, than half a dozen men-of-war on the 
ocean. By judicious operations, therefore, on a small scale 
inland, little expense would be incurred, and the English 
slave-trade policy on the East would have the same fair 
chance of success as on the West Coast. 



142 RETURN TO THE SHIP. Chap. VI. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Return to the Vessel. — Nearly Poisoned by the Juice of Cassava. — "Casse- 
reep," or Cassava Sap, a perfect Preservative of Meat. — Dr. Kirk takes the 
direct Route from Chibisa's to Tette. — Great Suffering on the Journey. — 
Magnetical Observations by Charles Livingstone. — Shire Biscuit. — Wheaten 
Flour necessary for European Stomachs. — Season for sowing Wheat. — Off 
to Kongone. — Two Miles of Elephants. — Our generous friend Senhor Fer- 
rao. — Kongone. — Beach the Vessel for Repairs. — Arrival of H.M.S. Lynx. 
— Loss of the Mail. — Leave for Tette Dec. 16th. — Governor at Shupanga. — 
His Opinions and ours. — Confessions of an old Slave-dealer. — Paul Mariano. 
—Arrival at Tette, Feb. 2d, I860.— Fabulous Silver Mine of Chicova.— Ex- 
actions of the Banyai submitted to by the Portuguese. — Sumptuary Laws. — 
Portuguese of Te'tte. — Wine or Climate? — Funerals. — Weddings. — Coal and 
Gold. — Defer our Departure for the Interior. — Down again to Kongone. — 
Up the Stream on the 15th of March. — Secret Canal used for Slaving. — 
Governor of Quillimane sent to discover Kongone. — Mr. Sunley's attempt to 
begin lawful Trade at River Angoxe. — Major Sicard at Mazaro. — Change 
of Names. — Its Advantages. — The " Asthmatic" very ill indeed. — Mr. Rae 
goes Home on Duty. — The Kwakwa River. — " Comical Creatures." — Mice. 
— Hope for fat Folk, or Cockroaches as aids to Banting. — Zulus come to lift 
their Rents at Senna. — Striped Senna Pigs and Fever. — Fever-plant. — 
Reach Tette on the 25th of April. — Want of Irrigation. — One Branch of 
Tette Industry. 

After a land-journey of forty days, we returned to the 
ship on the 6th of October, 1859, in a somewhat exhausted 
condition, arising more from a sort of poisoning than from 
the usual fatigue of travel. "We had taken a little mullaga- 
tawny paste, for making soup, in case of want of time to 
cook other food. Late one afternoon, at the end of an un- 
usually long march, we reached Mikena, near the base of 
Mount Njongone, to the north of Zomba, and the cook was 
directed to use a couple of spoonfuls of the paste ; but, in- 
stead of doing so, he put in the whole potful. The soup 



Chap. VI. NEARLY POISONED. 143 

tasted rather hot, but we added boiled rice to it, and, being 
very hungry, partook freely of it ; and, in consequence of the 
overdose, we were delayed several days in severe suffering, 
and some of the party did not recover till after our return to 
the ship. Our illness may partly have arisen from another 
cause. One kind of cassava (Jatropha maligna) is known to 
be, in its raw state, poisonous, but by boiling it carefully in 
two waters, which must be thrown off, the poison is extract- 
ed, and the cassava rendered fit for food. The poisonous sort 
is easily known by raising a bit of the bark of the root, and 
putting the tongue to it. A bitter taste shows poison, but it 
is probable that even the sweet kind contains an injurious 
principle. The sap, which, like that of our potatoes, is inju- 
rious as an article of food, is used in the " Pepper-pot" of the 
West Indies, under the name of " Cassereep," as a perfect 
preservative of meat. This juice, put into an earthen vessel 
with a little water and Chili pepper, is said to keep meat that 
is immersed in it good for a great length of time, even for 
years. No iron or steel must touch the mixture, or it will 
become sour. This " Pepper-pot," of which we first heard 
from the late Archbishop Whately, is a most economical 
meat-safe in a hot climate ; any beef, mutton, pork, or fowl 
that may be left at dinner, if put into the mixture and a lit- 
tle fresh cassereep added, keeps perfectly, though otherwise 
the heat of the climate or flies would spoil it. Our cook, 
however, boiled the cassava root as he was in the habit of 
cooking meat, namely, by filling the pot with it, and then 
pouring in water, which he allowed to stand on the fire until 
it had become absorbed and boiled away. This method did 
not expel the poisonous properties of the root, or render it 
wholesome; for, notwithstanding our systematic caution in 
purchasing only the harmless sort, we suffered daily from its 



144: GREAT HEAT AND DROUGHT. Chap. VI. 

effects, and it was only just before the end of our trip that 
this pernicious mode of boiling it was discovered by us. 

In ascending 3000 feet from the lowlands to the high- 
lands, or on reaching the low valley of the Shire from the 
higher grounds, the change of climate was very marked. 
The heat was oppressive below, the thermometer standing at 
from 84° to 103° in the shade ; and our spirits were as dull 
and languid as they had been exhilarated on the heights in 
a temperature cooler by some 20°. The water of the river 
was sometimes 84° or higher, while that we had been drink- 
ing in the hill streams was only 65°. 

It was found necessary to send two of our number across 
from the Shire to Tette ; and Dr. Kirk, with guides from 
Chibisa, and accompanied by Mr. Eae, the engineer, accom- 
plished the journey. We had found the country to the 
north and east so very well watered, that no difficulty was 
anticipated in this respect in a march of less than a hundred 
miles; but on this occasion our friends suffered severely. 
The little water to be had at this time of the year, by dig- 
ging in the beds of dry water-courses, was so brackish as to 
increase thirst ; some of the natives, indeed, were making salt 
from it ; and when, at long intervals, a less brackish supply 
was found, it was nauseous and muddy, from the frequent 
visits of large game. The tsetse abounded. The country 
was level, and large tracts of it covered with mopane forest, 
the leaves of which afford but scanty shade to the baked 
earth, so that scarcely any grass grows upon it. The sun 
was so hot that the men frequently jumped from the path in 
the vain hope of cooling, for a moment, their scorched feet, 
under the almost shadeless bushes ; and the native who car- 
ried the provision of salt pork got lost, and came into Tette 
two days after the rest of the party, with nothing but the 



Chap. VI. STEAITENED FOR PROVISIONS. 145 

fibre of the meat left, the fat, melted by the blazing sun, hav- 
ing all run down his back. This path was soon made a 
highway for slaving parties by Captain Eaposo, the com- 
mandant. The journey nearly killed our two active young 
friends, and what the slaves must have since suffered on it 
no one can conceive ; but slaving, probably, can never be 
conducted without enormous suffering and loss of life. 

A series of magnetical observations for ascertaining the dip 
and declination of the needle was made by Charles Living- 
stone at Dakanamoio Island, as others had been made before 
at Expedition Island and at Tette ; after which the ship left 
for the Kongone. All our provisions had been expended 
except tea and salt pork ; but fowls, beans, and mapira meal 
could be purchased from the natives. This meal does not, 
however, agree with the European stomach; and wheaten 
flour, in some form or other, is indispensable to the white 
man's health in Africa. Our ingenious first or leading 
stoker, Eowe, prepared mapira meal in many ways j at first 
he simply baked it pure, then tried a little pork gravy with 
it ; next he mixed bananas, and finally bananas and cloves ; 
but, in whatever form the frightful Shire biscuit was baked, 
the same inevitable result ensued — gnawing heartburn 
throughout the entire process of digestion. It would there- 
fore be advisable for missionaries and traders to secure a con- 
stant supply of wheat ; and that could as easily be done by 
them as by the Portuguese, if only the proper season were 
selected for sowing it. April and May, the beginning of the 
cold weather, are the months in which no rain need be ex- 
pected to fall; and irrigation must be resorted to, as at the 
Cape, for which there are abundant facilities. If wheat is 
sown in the rainy season, the crop runs all to stalk. Men of 
energy would never be dependent on any other country for 

their food in this. 

K 



146 GENEROSITY OF SENHOR FERRAO. Chap. VI. 

Mankokwe now sent a message to say that he wished us 
to stop at his village on our way down. He came on board 
on our arrival there with a handsome present, and said that 
his young people had dissuaded him from visiting us before, 
but now he was determined to see what every one else was 
seeing. A bald, square-headed man, who had been his prime 
minister when we came up, was now out of office, and anoth- 
er old man, who had taken his place, accompanied the chief. 
In passing the Elephant Marsh we saw nine large herds of 
elephants; they sometimes formed a line two miles long. 
On the 26th of October a heavy thunder-storm came on, and 
some large hailstones fell, to the surprise of our Senna men, 
who had never seen heavy hail before, though it is not at all 
unusual for it to fall farther inland. A shower fell at Ku- 
ruman which killed kids, fowls, and antelopes ; another, at 
Kolobeng, was destructive to the glass of the mission-house 
windows. 

On the 2d of November we anchored off Shamoara, and 
sent the boat to Senna for biscuit and other provisions. Sen- 
hor Ferrao, with his wonted generosity, gave us a present of 
a bullock, which he sent to us in a canoe. Wishing to know 
if a second bullock would be acceptable to us, he consulted 
his Portuguese and English dictionary, and asked the sailor 
in charge if he would take another ; but Jack, mistaking the 
Portuguese pronunciation of the letter h, replied, " Oh, no, 
sir, thank you; I don't want an otter in the boat, they are 
such terrible biters I" 

We had to ground the vessel on a shallow sand-bank every 
night ; she leaked so fast that in deep water she would have 
sunk, and the pump had to be worked all day to keep her 
afloat. Heavy rains fell daily, producing the usual injurious 
effects in the cabin ; and unable to wait any longer for our 



Chap. VI. LOSS OF MAIL-BAGS. 147 

associates, who had gone overland from the Shire to Tette, 
we ran down to the Kongone and beached her for repairs. 
Her majesty's ship Lynx, Lieut. Berkeley commanding, call- 
ed shortly afterward with supplies ; the bar, which had been 
perfectly smooth *for some time before, became rather rough 
just before her arrival, so that it was two or three days be- 
fore she could communicate with us. Two of her boats tried 
to come in on the second day, and one of them, mistaking 
the passage, capsized in the heavy breakers abreast of the 
island. Mr. Hunt, gunner, the officer in charge of the sec- 
ond boat, behaved nobly, and by his skillful and gallant con- 
duct succeeded in rescuing every one of the first boat's crew. 
Of course the things that they were bringing to us were lost, 
but we were thankful that all the men were saved. The 
loss of the mail-bags, containing government dispatches and 
our friends' letters for the past year, was felt severely, as we 
were on the point of starting on an expedition into . the inte- 
rior, which might require eight or nine months; and twenty 
months is a weary time to be without news of friends and 
family. In the repairing of our crazy craft, we received 
kind and efficient aid from Lieutenant Berkeley, and we were 
enabled to leave for Tette on December 16th. 

On our way up we met the Governor of Quillimane com- 
ing down in a boat. He said that he was ordered by the 
Lisbon government to select, after personal investigation, the 
best port for ships to enter, and the best landing-place for 
goods. We gave him directions how to find Kongone. He 
added that he was confident that the Portuguese of his own 
district knew of a mouth from which they exported slaves, 
but they would not tell him where it was, and it was on this 
account he applied to us. His excellency next morning un- 
fortunately caught fever, and returned before he reached the 



148 GOVERNOR AT SHUPANGA. Chap. VI. 

river's mouth. A Portuguese naval officer was subsequently 
sent by his government to examine the different entrances. 
He looked only, and then made a report, in which our pub- 
lished soundings were used without acknowledgment. His 
own countrymen smiled at the silly vanity exhibited by 
their government in thus seeking information, and all the 
while pretending to antecedent knowledge. When opposite 
Expedition Island^ the furnace bridge of our steamer broke 
down, as it had often done before. Luckily, it occurred at 
a good place for game, so we got buffalo beef and venison 
while it was undergoing repair. 

On the 31st of December, 1859, we reached Shupanga, 
where we had to remain eight days, awaiting the arrival of 
cotton cloth from Quillimane. Gray calico or sheeting is 
the usual currency of Eastern Africa, and this supply was to 
serve as money during our expedition into the interior. 
The governor and his two handsome grown-up daughters 
were staying in the Shupanga house. It is seldom that the 
Portuguese show any repugnance to being served by blacks, 
but he preferred to be waited on by his daughters, and they 
performed their duty with graceful ease. This was the more 
agreeable to us, inasmuch as one rarely meets the Portuguese 
ladies at table in this country. His excellency, talking in no 
way confidentially, but quite openly — indeed, it is here the 
common mode of speaking of lamentable truths — said that 
the Portuguese in this country were a miserable lot, quite 
debased by debauchery, and with no enterprise whatever. 
A few of the large slaveholders, had they any vigor left, 
might each send fifty or a hundred slaves to the Cape, Mau- 
ritius, and England, to learn sugar-making and trades, after 
which they could manufacture their own cloth from cotton 
grown on the spot, and make their own sugar too, instead of 



Chap. VI. PORTUGUESE CUNNING. 149 

importing it from abroad : he saw no reason even why they 
should not ere long have a railroad across the continent to 
Angola ! 

His excellency's remarks exhibit a failing often noticed 
among the Portuguese, and resembling that of certain of our 
countrymen, who take a foolish pride in deriding every 
thing English. If we may judge by our own impressions, 
strangers would either regret to hear a man, as we often 
have, winding up a tirade with the cHmax "I am horribly 
ashamed that I was born a Portuguese," or would despise 
him. His observations also showed the magnificent ideas 
that are entertained, to the entire neglect of plain matter-of- 
fact business and industry. Indigo six feet high was grow- 
ing self-sown in abundance at our feet ; superior cotton was 
found about a mile off, which had propagated itself in spite 
of being burned off annually for many years; and sugar- 
cane is said to be easily cultivated on the greater part of the 
Zambesi delta ; but, instead of taking the benefit, in a com- 
mon-sense way, of these obvious advantages, our friends, 
while indulging in magnificent dreams of a second East In- 
dia Company, to be established by English capitalists in 
Eastern Africa, were all the while diligently exporting the 
labor to the Island of Bourbon. The programme of this 
English Company, carefully drawn out by a minister of the 
crown at Lisbon, provides with commendable stringency for 
the erection of schools and bridges, the making of roads, and 
deepening of harbors, in this land of " Prester John," all to 
be delivered back to the Portuguese at the lapse of twenty 
years ! 

His excellency adverted to the notorious fact that the 
home government of Portugal had to uphold the settlements 
in Eastern Africa at an annual loss of £5000, while little or 



150 CONFESSIONS OF A SLAVE-TRADER. Chap. VI. 

no trade went thence to Lisbon, and no Portuguese ever 
made a fortune and retired to spend it at home. It is, in- 
deed, matter of intense regret that statesmen, known by the 
laws they have enacted to be enlightened men, should be the 
means of perpetuating so much misery in this slave-making 
country, by keeping out other nations, with a pretense to 
dominion where they have absolutely no power for good. 
Is it not paying too dearly for a mere swagger in Europe to 
have to bear the odium of united Christendom as the first 
to begin the modem ocean slave-trade, and the last to aban- 
don it? 

A worn out slave-trader, sadly diseased, and nearly blind, 
used to relate to us in a frank and open manner the moving 
incidents of his past career. It was evident that he did not 
see slavery in the same light as we did. His countrymen 
all knew that the plea of humanity was the best for exciting 
his liberality, and he was certainly most generous and obli- 
ging to us. On expressing our surprise that so humane a 
man could have been guilty of so much cruelty as the ex- 
portation of slaves entailed, he indignantly denied that he 
had ever torn slaves away from their homes. He had ex- 
ported "brutbs do mato" beasts of the field alone — that is, 
natives still wild, or lately caught in forays. This way of 
viewing the matter made him gravely tell us that, when his 
wife died, to dull the edge of his grief he made a foray 
among the tribes near the mouth of the Shire, and took 
many captives. He had commenced slave-trading at Angola 
and made several fortunes, but somehow managed to dissi- 
pate them all in riotous living in a short time at Eio de Ja- 
neiro. " The money a man makes in the slave-trade," said 
he, "is all bad, and soon goes back to the devil." Some 
twelve years since he embarked with a lot of ivory from 



Chap. VI. SENHOR VIANNA. 153 

Quillimane, and the vessel was seized as a slaver and carried 
to the Cape. Other ships of his had been captured by our 
cruisers, and he had nothing to say against that; it was all 
right and fair, for they were actually employed in the slave- 
trade. But it was wrong, he thought, for the English to 
take this vessel, as she was then on a lawful voyage. The 
English officers had thought so to, and wished to restore it 
to him, and would have done so, for they were gentlemen, 
but a rascally countryman of his own at the Cape opposed 
them, and his vessel was condemned. Many years afterward 
a naval officer, who had been in the cruiser that took his 
ship, accompanied us up the river, and, recognizing our 
friend, at once informed him that the British government, 
having subsequently ascertained that the capture of his ves- 
sel was illegal, had paid to the Portuguese government the 
full value of both ship and cargo. 

Senhor Yianna, a settler, had just purchased a farm of 
three miles square, one side of which was the battle-field of 
Mazaro, and for this he was to pay nine hundred dollars, or 
£180, in three years. He also rented from the government 
forty miles of Mariano's estate, situated on the Shire and 
Zambesi. Mr. Azevedo rented for many years eighty miles 
of the land on the Eastern side of Mazaro. The rental of a 
few hundred dollars is made up by the colonos or serfs pay- 
ing him who farms the land a bag or two of grain annually, 
and performing certain services somewhat as was done in 
our "cottar" system. The Landeens or Zulus on the oppo- 
site or southern bank had come down for their tribute, but 
Yianna sent a small present, and begged them not to press 
for it until the governor had gone. Meanwhile sending all 
his goods to the opposite side, he shortly after left with the 
governor, the Zulus being unpaid. The chief object in pay- 



154 PAUL MARIANO. Chap. VI. 

ing the Zulu tax is to obtain permission to cut the gigantic 
Gunda- trees, some twenty miles inland, for the construction 
of the large " coches" or canoes that are used on the Zambesi. 
He had, by felling the timber, secured canoes enough from 
the estate to last ten years, and trusted that, long ere that 
time had expired, his sort of moonlight flitting would be 
forgotten. He complained bitterly, notwithstanding, of the 
want of respect shown by these natives to the governor and 
himself. 

While we were at Shupanga, Paul Mariano was carried 
past, on his way to Senna, a prisoner in a canoe. He had 
been accused of murdering a few poor black fellows, one of 
whom was a carpenter, belonging to the well-known Senhor 
Azevedo. An officer and some soldiers made a descent on 
Mariano by night, and took him prisoner. His sister came 
to the governor, and asked him outright, before a number of 
gentlemen, how much money he required to let her brother 
go free. His excellency, of course, was very much shocked 
at her audacity, and indignantly reprimanded her ; but, sin- 
gularly enough, within a few days Paul made his escape and 
returned to his island, where he has ever since remained un- 
disturbed. Before we knew where he had gone, a gentle- 
man, well acquainted with the ways of the country, was ask- 
ed whither he imagined Paul had fled. " Bah ! (qual !)" said 
he, " to his own house, to be sure ;" and thither he had gone. 

We had now frequent rains, and the river rose considera- 
bly ; our progress up the stream was distressingly slow, and 
it was not until the 2d of February, 1860, that we reached 
Tette. Mr. Thornton returned on the same day from a geo- 
logical tour, by which some Portuguese expected that a fab- 
ulous silver mine would be rediscovered. The tradition in 
the country is, that the Jesuits formerly knew and worked 



Chap. VI. EXACTIONS OF THE BANYAI. 155 

a precious lode at Chicova. Mr. Thornton had gone beyond 
Zumbo in company with a trader of color; he soon after 
this left the Zambesi, and, joining the expedition of the 
Baron van der Decken, explored the snow mountain Kili- 
manjaro, northwest of Zanzibar. Mr. Thornton's compan- 
ion, the trader, brought back much ivory, having found it 
both abundant and cheap. He was obliged, however, to pay 
heavy fines to the Banyai and other tribes, in the country 
which is coolly claimed in Europe as Portuguese. During 
this trip of six months 200 pieces of cotton cloth of sixteen 
yards each, besides beads and brass wire, were paid to the 
different chiefs for leave to pass through their country. In 
addition to these sufficiently weighty exactions, the natives 
of this dominion have got into the habit of imposing fines for 
alleged milandos, or crimes, which the trader's men may 
have unwittingly committed. The merchants, however, sub- 
mit rather than run the risk of fighting. The ivory is cheap 
enough to admit of the payment. Each merchant of Tette 
is said to be obliged to pay for the maintenance of a certain 
number of the soldiers in the garrison ; and he who had just 
returned from the interior had to support five, although, no 
services were rendered to him. The usual way of bringing 
the ivory down is by canoes from Zumbo to Chicova ; there 
the canoes are left, and land carriage takes their place past 
Kebrabasa. This trader hired the Banyai to carry the ivory 
past the rapids. They agreed to do so for three yards of 
cloth each a trip, but threw down their loads on the path re- 
peatedly, demanding more and more, until they raised their 
claims to ten yards. " I could have fought and beaten them 
all with, my own men," said the trader, " but on reaching 
Tette the governor would have fined me for disturbing the 
peace of the country. The Banyai would have robbed those 



156 INTERFERENCE WITH TARIFF. Chap. VI. 

of my party behind of the ivory, and all the redress to be 
obtained from our authorities would have been the mortifi- 
cation of knowing that, on hearing my complaint, they had 
sent up to the Banyai to purchase my ivory at a cheap rate 
for themselves." 

The senior officer, since deceased, was acting commandant 
of the fort at Tette, and was a rare specimen of a governor. 
Soon after he came into power he passed a sumptuar}' law 
defining the market prices of native produce. Owing to the 
desolating wars of former years, the cost of provisions was 
nearly three times as much as in by-gone days; so his ex- 
cellency determined to reduce prices to their former stand- 
ard, and proclaimed that in future twenty-four fowls instead 
of eight were to be sold for two yards of calico, and that the 
prices of sheep, goats, and oil should be reduced in like pro- 
portion. The first native who came to market refused to 
sell his fowls at government prices, and was at once hauled 
up before the irate commandant, and, for contumacy to this 
new re-enactment of old laws, condemned to be marched up 
and down the street all day, with his cackling merchandise 
hung round his neck, and t then sent to prison to pass the 
night. Another poor fellow brought a pot of ground-nut- 
oil for sale, and was condemned to drink of it largely for re- 
fusing to sell it at the legal rate. The only difficulty that 
this gentleman met with in carrying out his reforms arose 
from the natives declining to come with their produce until 
the laws were repealed. 

As there is a pretty high « tariff on all imported wines and 
spirits, Tette, for a mere village, must yield a respectably 
large revenue. The climate is usually blamed for every 
thing ; thus the merchants, being of a social turn, have night 
parties in each other's houses. During these meetings the 



Chap. VI. INTEMPERANCE AT TETTE. 157 

curious debilitating effects of the climate may be witnessed. 
In the course of an hour a number of the members become 
too feeble to sit in their chairs, and slip unconsciously under 
the table ; while others, who have been standing up loudly 
singing or talking, fall into one another's arms, swearing eter- 
nal friendship, but gradually losing control both of tongue 
and limb. Slaves sit at the door, who, understanding these 
symptoms, enter and bear their weak and prostrate masters 
home. We should not hesitate to ascribe these symptoms 
to inebriety if intoxication was not described here by the 
phrase "he speaks English," that is, "he's drunk;" so that 
any such charge would have the appearance of a tu quoque. 
The shocking prevalence of intemperance and other vices 
among the Portuguese at Tette made us wonder, not that 
they had fever, but that they were not all swept off together. 
Their habits would be fatal in any climate ; the natives 
marveled even more than we did ; our Makololo, for in- 
stance, looked on aghast at these convivial parties, and Si- 
ninyane described one in a way that might have done the 
actors good. " A Portuguese stands up," said he, "and cries 
'Viva!' that means, I am pleased; another says 'Viva!' I 
am pleased too: and then they all shout out 'Viva!' we are 
all pleased together; they are so glad just to get a little 
beer." One night he saw three inebriated officers in the 
midst of their enjoyment, quarreling about a false report; 
one jumped on his superior and tried to bite him ; and, 
while these two were rolling on the floor, the third caught 
up a chair and therewith pounded them both. Sininyane, 
horrified at such conduct, exclaimed, " What kind of people 
can these whites be, who treat even their chiefs in this 
manner?" 

The general monotony of existence at Tette is sometimes 



158 FUNERALS— WEDDINGS. Chap. VI 

relieved by an occasional death or wedding. Wherl the de 
ceased is a person of consequence, the quantity of gunpow 
der his slaves are allowed to expend is enormous. The ex 
pense may, in proportion to their means, resemble that in 
curred by foolishly gaudy funerals in England. When at 
Tette, we always joined with sympathizing hearts in aiding, 
by our presence at the last rites, to soothe the sorrows of the 
surviving relatives. We are sure that they would have done 
the same to us, had we been the mourners. We never had 
to complain of want of hospitality. Indeed, the great kind- 
ness shown by many, of whom we have often spoken, will 
never be effaced from our memory till our dying day. 
When we speak of their failings it is in sorrow, not in an- 
ger. Their trading in slaves is an enormous mistake. Their 
government places them in a false position by cutting them 
off from the rest of the world ; and of this they always speak 
with a bitterness which, were it heard, might alter the tone 
of the statesmen of Lisbon. But here there is no press, no 
booksellers' shops, and scarcely a schoolmaster. Had we 
been born in similar untoward circumstances — we tremble 
to think of it ! 

The weddings are celebrated with as much jollity as wed- 
dings are any where. We witnessed one in the house of our 
friend the Padre. It being the marriage of his god-daugh- 
ter, he kindly invited us to be partakers in his joy ; and we 
there became acquainted with old Donna Eugenia, who was 
a married wife and had children, when the slaves came from 
Cassange, before any of us were born. The whole merry- 
making was marked by good taste and propriety. 

Another marriage brought out a feature in the Catholic 
Church akin, we believe, to a custom in Scotland, which com- 
mended itself to us as right. Our friend Captain Terrazao 



Chap. VI. COAL AT TETTE. 151 

was about to be married to a young lady of no less illus- 
trious a name than Victoria Alexandrina, the daughter of 
one of the richest merchants of Tette. But her mother had 
been living only in a state of concubinage ; and, to legitima- 
tize the children, the marriage of the parents was first cele- 
brated, and then Terrazao received his bride, and another 
gentleman her sister on the same day. With our laws it 
seems to be a pity that those who have the misfortune to be 
born out of wedlock should be condemned, for no sin of their 
own, to bear the stain through life. 

In the wedding processions, the brides and bridegrooms 
are carried in hammocks slung to poles, called machillas. 
The female slaves, dressed in all their finery, rejoice in the 
happiness of their masters and mistresses. The males carry 
the machillas, or show their gladness by discharging their 
muskets. The friends of the young couple form part of the 
procession behind the machillas, dressed usually in black 
dress-coats and tall chimney-pot hats, which to us outlandish 
spectators look more hideous now than they ever did at 
home. The women, as seen in the wood-cut, stand admiring 
their neighbor's finery, balancing their water-pots gracefully 
on their heads ; while all the invited guests proceed to wash 
down the dust, raised by the crowd, in copious potations, fol- 
lowed by feasting, dancing, and joyous merry-making. 

About the only interesting object in the vicinity of Tette 
is the coal a few miles to the north. There, in the feeders of 
the stream Revubue, it crops out in cliff sections. The seams 
are from four to seven feet in thickness ; one measured was 
found to be twenty -five feet thick. That on the surface con- 
tains much shale, but, a shaft having been run in horizontal- 
ly for some twenty-five or thirty feet, the quality improved, 

and it gave good steam. The imbedded roots of plants 

L 



162 DOWN AGAIN TO KONGONE. Chap. VI. 

showed it to be of old formation. It lies under a coarse 
gray sandstone, which often has the ripple mark, and im- 
pressions of plants and silicified wood on its surface. Gold 
also is found in many of the streams on the south of Tette ; 
but, so long as slavery maintains its way, the coal and gold 
will be kept unworked, and safe for future generations. 

Learning that it would be difficult for our party to obtain 
food beyond Kebrabasa before the new crop came in, and 
knowing the difficulty of hunting for so many men in the 
wet season, we decided on deferring our departure for the 
interior until May, and in the mean time to run down once 
more to the Kongone, in the hopes of receiving letters and 
dispatches from the man-of-war that was to call in March. 
We left Tette on the 10th, and at Senna heard that our lost 
mail had been picked up on the beach by natives west of 
the Milambe; carried to Quillimane; sent thence to Senna; 
and passing us somewhere on the river, on to Tette. At 
Shupanga the governor informed us that it was a very large 
mail ; no great comfort, seeing it was away up the river. 

Musquitoes were excessively troublesome at the harbor, 
and especially when a light breeze blew from the north over 
the mangroves. We lived for several weeks in small huts 
built by our men. Those who did the hunting for the 
party always got wet, and were attacked by fever, but gen- 
erally recovered in time to be out again before the meat was 
all consumed. No ship appearing, we started off on the 
15th of March, and stopped to wood on the Luabo, near 
an encampment of hippopotamus hunters ; our men heard 
again, through them, of the canoe path from this place to 
Quillimane, but they declined to point it out. The Govern- 
or of Quillimane had already complained that the Portu- 
guese of his district kept it secret for slaving purposes, and 



Chap. VI. PRETENSIONS OF THE PORTUGUESE. 163 

refused to show it, even to him. Masakasa felt confident 
that he could get it out of these hunters by his diplomacy, 
and said that a soft tongue would eat them up, while a hard 
one would drive them off; but they all left during the night. 
We subsequently ascertained that the entrance to it is by a 
natural opening called Kushishone, between two and three 
miles above the Kongone Canal, but on the opposite bank 
of the Zambesi. It is, however, of no importance, as it is at 
times capable of passing only small canoes. 

The Portuguese government in Lisbon have since striven 
with amusing earnestness to prove that these parts were long 
ago well known to them. To the rest of the world this is 
a matter of perfect indifference. We had to discover, or at 
least to rediscover, them for ourselves ; and, considering the 
perfect knowledge possessed by that ministry, it is odd that 
none of their information accompanied the orders to the of- 
ficials in Africa. The Governor of Quillimane had orders 
to examine the Kongone, but frankly confessed he did not 
know where that harbor lay. Our friend Major Sicard, after 
receiving the assurance from us that no Zulus could cross 
the creeks around it, with sly foresight resolved to gain pos- 
session of a large slice of the soil for himself, and sent slaves 
to make a garden, and build him a house at Kongone, which 
gives the harbor its value. They executed their orders at 
a point some twenty miles off, not knowing that we had 
taken the name from the side of the natural canal between 
the Kongone branch and the Zambesi. We could see plain- 
ly that we and our Portuguese friends had different ranges 
of vision. We looked for the large result of benefit to all, 
both white and black, by establishing free commercial inter- 
course. They could see nothing beyond our inducing En- 
glish merchants to establish a company, of which the Portu- 



164 MAJOR SICARD AT MAZARO. Chap. VI. 

guese would, by fictitious claims, reap all the benefit. The 
short-sighted " dog in the manger" policy was so transparent 
that we always warned our commercial friends in England 
that, without free navigation of the Zambesi, it was in vain 
for them to run any risk. Nothing but slaving will on any 
account be tolerated. W. Sunley, Esq., of Johanna, on the 
recommendation of the late Admiral Wyvil, took a cargo 
of goods to the Eiver Angonsh, or Angoxe, in order to be- 
gin a legal traffic with the natives. He succeeded as well 
as he expected. He was then inveigled, on false pretenses, 
by two Portuguese officials, to Mozambique ; and, as soon as 
he came under the guns of the fort, he was declared a pris- 
oner, and his cargo and ship confiscated, for "illegal traffic 
in Portuguese territory." Had he been a slaver, without 
doubt a little head-money would have secured him lodging 
and a feast in the governor general's palace instead. 

We found our friend Major Sicard at Mazaro with picks, 
shovels, hurdles, and slaves, having come to build a fort and 
custom-house at the Kongone. As we had no good reason 
to hide the harbor, but many for its being made known, we 
supplied him with a chart of the tortuous branches, which, 
running among the mangroves, perplex the search ; and with 
such directions as would enable him to find his way down 
to the river. He had brought the relics of our fugitive mail, 
and it was a disappointment to find that all had been lost 
with the exception of a bundle of old newspapers, two photo- 
graphs, and three letters which had been written before we 
left England. • 

Sininyane had exchanged names with a Zulu at Shupan- 
ga, and on being called next morning made no answer ; to a 
second and third summons he paid no attention ; but at 
length one of his men replied, " He is not Sininyane now, he 



Chap. VI. CHANGE OF NAMES. ^55 

is Moshoshoma;" and to this name he answered promptly. 
The custom of exchanging names with men of other tribes 
is not uncommon ; and the exchangers regard themselves as 
close comrades, owing special duties to each other ever after. 
Should one by chance visit his comrade's town, he expects 
to receive food, lodging, and other friendly offices from him. 
While Charles Livingstone was at Kebrabasa during the 
rainy season, a hungry, shivering native traveler was made 
a comrade for life, not by exchanging names, but by some 
food and a small piece of cloth. Eighteen months after, 
while on our journey into the interior, a man came into our 
camp bringing a liberal present of rice, meal, beer, and a 
fowl, and, .reminding us of what had been done for him 
(which Charles Livingstone had entirely forgotten), said that 
now, seeing us traveling, he " did not like us to sleep hun- 
gry or thirsty." Several of our men, like some people at 
home, dropped their own names and adopted those of the 
chiefs ; others were a little in advance of those who take the 
surnames of higher people, for they took those of the mount- 
ains or cataracts we had seen on our travels. We had a 
Chibisa, a Morambala, a Zomba, and a Kebrabasa, and they 
were called by these names even after they had returned to 
their own country. 

We had been so much hindered and annoyed by the " Ma 
Robert," alias " Asthmatic," that the reader, though a tithe 
is not mentioned, may think we have said more than enough. 
The man who had been the chief means of imposing this 
wretched craft on us had passed away, and with him all bit- 
terness from our hearts. We felt it to be a sad pity, how- 
ever, thai? any one, for unfair gain, should do deeds which 
can not be spoken of after he is gone. We had still our 
much • esteemed and noble - hearted friend, the late Admiral 



16(3 COMICAL CREATURES. Chap. VI. 

Washington, at home to see that we did not again suffer ; 
but the prospect of effecting a grand work on Lake Nyassa 
by means of a steamer made to be unscrewed and carried 
past the cataracts was so fair — indeed, it promised, if carried 
out, so entirely to change the wretched system which has 
been the bane of the country for ages — that, to have the 
vessel properly constructed, we sent Mr. Kae, the engineer, 
home to superintend its construction. He could be of no 
farther use in the " Asthmatic," as she was utterly beyond 
cure. We sent also five boxes of specimens, carefully col- 
lected and prepared by Dr. Kirk ; four of them, to our very 
great sorrow and loss, never arrived at the Gardens at Kew. 
We all accompanied our engineer on foot to a small stream 
that runs into the Kwakwa, or Eiver of Quillimane, on his 
way to that port to embark for England. 

The distance from Mazaro, on the Zambesi side, to the 
Kwakwa at N terra is about six miles, over a surprisingly 
rich dark soil. We passed the night in the long shed erect- 
ed at Nterra, on the banks of this river, for the use of trav- 
elers, who have often to wait several days for canoes; we 
tried to sleep, but the musquitoes and rats were so trouble- 
some as to render sleep impossible. The rats, or rather 
large mice, closely resembling Mus pumilio (Smith), of this 
region, are quite facetious, and, having a great deal of fun in 
them, often laugh heartily. Again and again they woke 
us up by scampering over our faces, and then bursting into 
a loud laugh of He ! he ! he ! at having performed the feat. 
Their sense of the ludicrous appears to be exquisite ; they 
screamed with laughter at the attempts which disturbed and 
angry human nature made in the dark to bring their ill- 
timed merriment to a close. Unlike their prudent Euro- 
pean cousins, which are said to leave a sinking ship, a party 



Chap. VI. SCORPIONS— CENTIPEDES. 167 

of these took up their quarters in our leaky and sinking 
vessel. Quiet and invisible by day, they emerged at night 
and cut their funny pranks. No sooner were we all asleep 
than they made a sudden dash over the lockers and across 
our faces for the cabin door, where all broke out into a loud 
He! he! he! he! he! he! showing how keenly they enjoyed 
the joke. They next went forward with as much delight, 
and scampered over the men. Every night they went fore 
and aft, rousing with impartial feet every sleeper, and laugh- 
ing to scorn the aimless blows, growls, and deadly rushes 
of outraged humanity. We observed elsewhere a species of 
large mouse, nearly allied to Euryotis unisulcatus (F. Cuvier), 
escaping up a rough and not very upright wall, with six 
young ones firmly attached to the perineum. They were 
old enough to be well covered with hair, and some were not 
detached by a blow which disabled the dam. We could not 
decide whether any 'involuntary muscles were brought into 
play in helping the young to adhere. Their weight seemed 
to require a sort of cataleptic state of the muscles of the jaw 
to enable them to hold on. 

Scorpions, centipedes, and poisonous spiders also were not 
unfrequently brought into the ship with the wood, and occa- 
sionally found their way into our beds; but, in every in- 
stance^, we were fortunate enough to discover and destroy 
them before they did any harm. Naval officers on this coast 
report that, when scorpions and centipedes remain a few 
weeks after being taken on board in a similar manner, their 
poison loses nearly all its virulence, but this we did not veri- 
fy. Snakes sometimes came in with the wood, but oftener 
floated dawn the river to us, climbing on board with ease by 
the chain-cable; and some poisonous ones were caught in 
the cabin. A green snake lived with us several weeks, con- 



1(58 ANNUAL TKIBUTE TO ZULUS. Chap VI. 

cealing himself behind the casing of the deck-house in the 
daytime. To be aroused in the dark by five feet of cold 
green snake gliding over one's face is rather unpleasant, 
however rapid the movement may be. Myriads of two va- 
rieties of cockroaches infested the vessel ; they not only ate 
round the roots of our nails, but even devoured and defiled 
our food, flannels, and boots ; vain were all our efforts to 
extirpate these destructive pests ; if you kill one, say the 
sailors, a hundred come down to his funeral ! In the work 
of Commodore Owen it is stated that cockroaches, pounded 
into a paste, form a powerful carminative ; this has not been 
confirmed; but when monkeys are fed on them they are 
sure to become so lean as to suggest the idea that for fat 
people a course of cockroach might be as efficacious as a 
course of Banting. 

On coming to Senna, we found that the Zulus had arrived 
in force for their annual tribute. These men are under good 
discipline, and never steal from the people. The tax is 
claimed on the ground of conquest, the Zulus having for- 
merly completely overcome the Senna people, and chased 
them on to the islands in the Zambesi. Fifty-four of the 
Portuguese were slain on the occasion, and, notwithstanding 
the mud fort, the village has never recovered its former 
power. Fever was now very prevalent, and most of the 
Portuguese were down with it. The village has a number 
of foul pools, filled with green fetid mud, in which horrid, 
long -snouted, greyhound - shaped pigs wallow with delight 
The greater part of the space inclosed in the stockade, which 
is an oblong of say a thousand yards by five hundred, is cov- 
ered with tall indigo-plants, cassia, and bushes, with mounds 
on which once stood churches and monasteries. The air is 
not allowed free circulation, so it is not to be wondered at 







: ' TW 



m& ! 




»* 



f* 

!»*.. 






% ■•■■.'. 






HI 1 



lllil! 




Chap. VI. -FEVER PLANT. 171 

that men suffer from fever. The feeding of the pigs is in- 
describably shocking; but they are a favorite food them- 
selves, and the owners may be heard, both here and at Tette, 
recalling them from their wanderings by pet names, as 
"Joao," "Manoel," "kudia! kudia ! (to eat, to eat), Anto- 
nio!" We saw a curious variety which had accidentally 
appeared among these otherwise uninteresting brutes. A lit- 
ter was beautifully marked with yellowish-brown and white 
stripes alternately, and the bands, about an inch broad, were 
disposed, not as in the zebra, but horizontally along the 
body. Stripes appear occasionally in mules and in horses, 
and are supposed to show a reversion to the original wild 
type, in the same way that highly -bred domestic pigeons 
sometimes manifest a tendency to revert to the plumage of 
the rock -pigeon, with its black bar across the tail. This 
striped variety may betoken relationship to the original wild 
pig, the young of which are distinctly banded, though the 
marks fade as the animal grows up. 

For a good view of the adjacent scenery, the hill Bara- 
muana, behind the village, was ascended. A caution was 
given about the probability of an attack of fever from a 
plant that grows near the summit. Dr. Kirk discovered it 
to be the Pcedevia fceticla, which, when smelt, actually does 
give headache and fever. It has a nasty fetor, as its name 
indicates. This is one instance in which fever and a foul 
smell coincide. In a number of instances offensive effluvia 
and fever seem to have no connection. Owing to the abund- 
ant rains, the crops in the Senna district were plentiful ; this 
was fortunate, after the partial failure of the past two years. 
It was the 25th of April, 1860, before we reached Tette ; 
here also the crops were luxuriant, and the people said that 
they had not had such abundance since 1856, the year when 



172 WANT OF IRRIGATION. Chap. VI. 

Dr. Livingstone came down the river. It is astonishing to 
any one who has seen the works for irrigation in other coun- 
tries, as at the Cape and in Egypt, that no attempt has ever 
been made, to lead out the water either of the Zambesi or 
any of its tributaries ; no machinery has 'ever been used to 
raise it even from the stream, but droughts and starvation 
are endured, as if they were inevitable dispensations of Prov- 
idence, incapable of being mitigated. Our friends at Tette, 
though heedless of the obvious advantages which other na- 
tions would eagerly seize, have beaten the entire world in 
one branch of industry, It is a sort of anomaly that the 
animal most nearly allied to man in structure and function 
should be the most alien to him in respect to labor or trusty 
friendship, but here the genius of the monkey is turned to 
good account. He is made to work in the chase of certain 
"wingless insects better known than respected." Having 
been invited to witness this branch of Tette industry, we can 
testify that the monkey took to it kindly, and it seemed 
profitable to both parties. 



Chap. VII. SAILOR'S GARDEN. 173 



CHAPTER VII. 

Prepare for a Journey to the Makololo Country. — Sailor's Garden.— Wheat, 
Time and Mode of Sowing. — Start from Tette May 15th, to take the Mako- 
lolo home. — Lukewarmness and Desertions. — Evil Effects of Contact with 
Slaves. — Man Lion and Lion Man. — Reasoning with a Lion. — Popular Be- 
lief. — New Path through Kebrabasa Hills. — Sandia. — Elephant -hunt. — 
Game Law. — A Feast of Elephant-meat. — We strike Zambesi by Morumb- 
wa, and complete the Survey of Kebrabasa from End to End. — Banyai 
again. — View of Kebrabasa. — Chicova Plains and open River. — Sandia's 
Report of Kebrabasa. 

Feeling in honor bound to return with those who had 
been the faithful companions of Dr. Livingstone in 1856, and 
to whose guardianship and services was due the accomplish- 
ment of a journey which all the Portuguese at Tette had 
previously pronounced impossible, the requisite steps were 
taken to convey them to their homes. 

We laid the ship alongside of the island Kanyimbe, oppo- 
site Tette, and, before starting for the country of the Mako- 
lolo, obtained a small plot of land, to form a garden for the 
two English sailors who were to remain in charge during 
our absence. We furnished them with a supply of seeds, 
and they set to work with such zeal that they certainly mer- 
ited success. Their first attempt at African horticulture met 
with failure from a most unexpected source ; every seed was 
dug up and the inside of it eaten by mice. "Yes," said an 
old native, next morning, on seeing the husks, "that is what 
happens this month ; for it is the mouse month, and the seed 
should have been sown last month, when I sowed mine." 
The sailors, however, sowed more next day ; and, being de- 
termined to outwit the mice, they this time covered the beds 



174 PREPARE FOR A JOURNEY. Chap. VII. 

over with grass. The onions, with other seeds of plants cul- 
tivated by the Portuguese, are usually planted in the begin- 
ning of April, in order to have the advantage of the cold 
season ; the wheat a little later, for the same reason. If sown 
at the beginning of the rainy season in November, it runs, 
as before remarked, entirely to straw ; but, as the rains are 
nearly over in May, advantage is taken of low-lying patches, 
which have been flooded by the river. A hole is made in 
the mud with a hoe, a few seeds dropped in, and the earth 
shoved back with the foot. If not favored with certain mis- 
ty showers, which, lower down the river, are simply fogs, 
water is borne from the river to the roots of the wheat in 
earthen pots ; and, in about four months, the crop is ready 
for the sickle. The wheat of Tette is exported, as the best 
grown in the country ; but a hollow spot at Maruru, close 
by Mazaro, yielded very good crops, though just at the level 
of the sea, as a few inches rise of tide shows. 

A number of days were spent in busy preparation for our 
journey ; the cloth, beads, and brass wire for the trip were 
sewn up in old canvass, and each package had the bearer's 
name printed on it. The Makololo, who had worked for the 
Expedition, were paid for their services, and every one who 
had come down with the doctor from the interior received a 
present of cloth and ornaments, in order to protect them from 
the greater cold of their own country, and to show that they 
had not come in vain. Though called Makololo by courtesy, 
as they were proud of the name, Kanyata, the principal head 
man, was the only real Makololo of the party ; and he, in 
virtue of his birth, had succeeded to the chief place on the 
death of Sekwebu. The others belonged to the conquered 
tribes of the Batoka, Bashubia, Ba-Selea, and Barotse. Some 
of these men had only added to their own vices those of the 



Chap. VII. START FROM TETTE. 175 

Tette slaves ; others, by toiling daring the first two years in 
navigating canoes and hunting elephants, had often managed 
to save a little, to take back to their own country, but had to 
part with it all for food to support the rest in times of hun- 
ger, and latterly had fallen into the improvident habits of 
slaves, and spent their surplus earnings in beer and agua ar- 
diente. 

Every thing being ready on the 15th of May, we started 
at 2 P.M. from the village where the Makololo had dwelt. 
A number of the men did not leave with the good-will which 
their talk for months before had led us to anticipate; but 
some proceeded upon being told that they were not compelled 
to go unless they liked, though others altogether declined 
moving. Many had taken up with slave-women, whom they 
assisted in hoeing, and in consuming the produce of their 
gardens. Some fourteen children had been born to them ; 
and in consequence of now having no chief to order them or 
to claim their services, they thought that they were about as 
well off as they had been in their own country, They knew 
and regretted that they could call neither wives nor children 
their own; the slave -owners claimed the whole; but their 
natural affections had been so enchained that they clave to 
the domestic ties. By a law of Portugal the baptized chil- 
dren of slave- women are all free ; by the custom of the Zam- 
besi that law is void. When it is referred to, the officers 
laugh and say, " These Lisbon-born laws are very stringent, 
but somehow, possibly from the heat of the climate, here they 
lose all their force." Only one woman joined our party — the 
wife of a Batoka man ; she had been given to him, in consid- 
eration of his skillful dancing, by the chief, Chisaka. A mer- 
chant sent three of his men along with us, with a present for 
Sekeletu, and Major Sicard also lent us three more to assist 



176 LUKEWARMNESS AND DESERTIONS. Chap. VII. 

us on our return, and two Portuguese gentlemen kindly gave 
us the loan of a couple of donkeys. We slept four miles 
above Tette, and hearing that the Banyai, who levy heavy 
fines on the Portuguese traders, lived chiefly on the right 
bank, we crossed over to the left, as we could not fully trust 
our men. If the Banyai had come in a threatening manner, 
our followers might perhaps, from having homes behind 
them, have even put down their bundles and run. Indeed 
two of them, at this point, made up their minds to go no far- 
ther, and turned back to Tette. Another, Monga, a Batoka, 
was much perplexed, and could not make out what course to 
pursue, as he had, three years previously, wounded Kanyata, 
the head man, with a spear. This is a capital offense among 
the Makololo, and he was afraid of being put to death for it 
on his return. He tried in vain to console himself with the 
facts that he had neither father, mother, sisters, nor brothers 
to mourn for him, and that he could die but once. He was 
good, and would go up to the stars to Yesu, and, therefore, 
did not care for death. In spite, however, of these reflections, 
he was much cast down until Kanyata assured him that he 
would never mention his misdeed to the chief; indeed, he 
had never even mentioned it to the doctor, which he would 
assuredly have done had it lain heavy on his heart. We 
were right glad of Monga's company, for he was a merry, 
good-tempered fellow, and his lithe manly figure had always 
been in the front in danger; and, from being left-handed, 
had been easily recognized in the fight with elephants. 

We commenced, for a certain number of days, with short 
marches, walking gently until broken in to travel. This is 
of so much importance that it occurs to us that more might 
be made out of soldiers if the first few days' marches were 
easy, and gradually increased in length and quickness. The 



Chap. VII. MAN LION. 177 

nights were cold, with heavy dews and occasional showers, 
and we had several cases of fever. Some of the men desert- 
ed every night, and we fully expected that all who had chil- 
dren would prefer to return to Tette, for little ones are well 
known to prove the strongest ties, even to slaves. It was 
useless informing them that, if they wanted to return, they 
had only to come and tell us so ; we should not be angry 
with them for preferring Tette to their own country. Con- 
tact with slaves had destroyed their sense of honor ; they 
would not go in daylight, but decamped in the night, only in 
one instance, however, taking our goods, though in two more 
they carried off their comrades' property. By the time we 
had got well into the Kebrabasa hills, thirty men, nearly a 
third of the party, had turned back, and it became evident 
that, if many more left us, Sekeletu's goods could not be car- 
ried up. At last, when the refuse had fallen away, no more 
desertions took place. 

Stopping one afternoon at a Kebrabasa village, a man, who 
pretended to be able to change himself into a lion, came to 
salute us. Smelling the gunpowder from a gun which had 
been discharged, he went on one side to get out of the wind 
of the piece, trembling in a most artistic manner, but quite 
overacting his part. The Makololo explained to us that he 
was a Pondoro, or a man who can change his form at will, 
and added that he trembles when he smells gunpowder. 
"Do you not see how he is trembling now?" We told them 
to ask him to change himself at once into a lion, and we 
would give him a cloth for the performance. " Oh no," re- 
plied they; "if we will tell him so, he may change himself 
and come when we are asleep and kill us." Having similar 
superstitions at home, they readily became as firm believers 

in the Pondoro as the natives of the village. We were told 

M 



178 POPULAR BELIEF. Chap. VII. 

that he assumes the form of a lion and remains in the woods 
for days, and is sometimes absent for a whole month. His 
considerate wife had built him a hut or den, in which she 
places food and beer for her transformed lord, whose meta- 
morphosis does not impair his human appetite. No one ever 
enters this hut except the Pondoro and his wife, and no stran- 
ger is allowed even to rest his gun against the Baobab-tree 
beside it ; the Mfumo, or petty chief of another small village, 
wished to fine our men for placing their muskets against an 
old tumble-down hut, it being that of the Pondoro. At times 
the Pondoro employs his acquired powers in hunting for the 
benefit of the village ; and, after an absence of a day or two, 
his wife smells the lion, takes a certain medicine, places it in 
the forest, and there quickly leaves it, lest the lion should 
kill even her. This medicine enables the Pondoro to change 
himself back into a man, return to the village, and say "Go 
and get the game that I have killed for you." Advantage is 
of course taken of what a lion has done, and they go and 
bring home the buffalo or antelope killed when he was a 
lion, or rather found when he was patiently pursuing his 
course of deception in the forest. We saw the Pondoro of 
another village dressed in a fantastic style, with numerous 
charms hung round him, and followed by a troop of boys, 
who were honoring him with rounds of shrill cheering. 

It is believed also that the souls of departed chiefs enter 
into lions and render them sacred. On one occasion, when 
we had shot a buffalo in the path beyond the Kafue, a hun- 
gry lion, attracted probably by the smell of the meat, came 
close to our camp, and roused up all hands by his roaring. 
Tuba Mokoro, imbued with the popular belief that the beast 
was a chief in disguise, scolded him roundly during his brief 
intervals of silence. " You a chief, eh ? You call yourself a 



Chap. VII. SEASONING WITH A LION. 179 

chief, do you ? What kind of chief are you, to come sneak- 
ing about in the dark, trying to steal our buffalo meat? Are 
you not ashamed of yourself? A pretty chief truly; you 
are like the scavenger beetle, and think of yourself only. 
You have not the heart of a chief; why don't you kill your 
own beef? You must have a stone in your chest, and no 
heart at all, indeed !" Tuba Mokoro producing no impres- 
sion on the transformed chief, one of the men, the most sedate 
of the party, who seldom spoke, took up the matter, and tried 
the lion in another strain. In his slow, quiet way, he expos- 
tulated with him on the impropriety of such conduct to 
strangers, who had never injured him. " We were traveling 
peaceably through the country back to our own chief. We 
never killed people, nor stole any thing. The buffalo meat 
was ours, not his, and it did not become a great chief like 
him to be prowling round in the dark, trying, like a hyena, 
to steal the meat of strangers. He might go and hunt for 
himself, as there was plenty of game in the forest." The 
Pondoro, being deaf to reason, and only roaring the louder, 
the men became angry, and threatened to send a ball through 
him if he did not go away. They snatched up their guns to 
shoot him, but he prudently kept in the dark, outside of the 
luminous circle made by our camp-fires, and there they did 
not like to venture. A little strychnine was put into a piece 
of meat and thrown to him, when he soon departed, and we 
heard no more of the majestic sneaker. 

The Kebrabasa people were now plumper and in better 
condition than on our former visits ; the harvest had been 
abundant ; they had plenty to eat and drink, and they were 
enjoying life as much as ever they could. At Defwe's vil- 
lage, near where the ship lay on her first ascent, we found two 
Mfumos or head men, the son and son-in-law of the former 



180 PASS THROUGH KEBRABASA HILLS. Chap. VII. 

chief. A sister's son has much more chance of succeeding to 
a chieftainship than the chief's own offspring, it being unques- 
tionable that, the sister's child .has the family blood. The*' 
men are all marked across the nose and up the middle of the 
forehead with short horizontal bars or cicatrices ; and a sin- 
gle brass earring of two or three inches diameter, like the an- 
cient Egyptian, is worn by the men. Some wear the hair long 
like the ancient Assyrians and Egyptians, and a few have 
eyes with the downward and inward slant of the Chinese. 

After fording the rapid Luia, we left our former path on 
the banks of the Zambesi, and struck off in a JST.W. direction 
behind one of the hill ranges, the eastern end of which is 
called Mongwa, the name of an acacia, having a peculiarly 
strong fetor, found on it. Our route wound up a valley 
along a small mountain stream which was nearly dry, and 
then crossed the rocky spurs of some of the lofty hills. The 
country was all very dry at the time, and no water was found 
except in an occasional spring and a few wells dug in the 
beds of water-courses. The people were poor, and always 
anxious to convince travelers of the fact. The men, unlike 
those on the plains, spend a good deal of their time in hunt- 
ing ; this may be because they have but little ground on the 
hill-sides suitable for gardens, and but little certainty of reap- 
ing what may be sown in the valleys. No women came for- 
ward in the hamlet east of Chiperiziwa where we halted for 
the night. Two shots had been fired at Guinea-fowl a little 
way off in the valley ; the women fled into the woods, and 
the men came to know if war was meant, and a few of the 
old folks only returned after hearing that we were for peace. 
The head man, Kambira, apologized for not having a present 
ready, and afterward brought us some meal, a roasted coney 
(Hyrax cajpensis) and a pot of beer; he wished to be thought 



Chap. VII. LAST OF THE DESERTERS. 181 

poor. The beer had come to him from a distance; he had 
none of his own. Like the Manganja,these people salute by 
clapping their hands. When a man comes to a place where 
others are seated, before sitting down he claps his hands to 
each in succession, and they do the same to him. If he has 
any thing to tell, both speaker and hearer clap their hands at 
the close of every paragraph, and then again vigorously at 
the end of the speech. The guide whom the head man gave 
us thus saluted each of his comrades before he started off 
with us. There is so little difference in the language that all 
the tribes of this region are virtually of one family. 

We proceeded still in the same direction, and passed only 
two small hamlets during the day. Except the noise our 
men made on the march, every thing was still around us: 
few birds were seen. The appearance of a whydah-bird 
showed that he had not yet parted with his fine long plumes. 
We passed immense quantities of ebony and lignum - vitae, 
and the tree from whose smooth and bitter bark granaries 
are made for corn. The country generally is clothed with a 
forest of ordinary-sized trees. We slept in the little village 
near Sindabwe, where our men contrived to purchase plenty 
of beer, and were uncommonly boisterous all the evening. 
We breakfasted next morning under green wild date-palms, 
beside the fine flowery stream, which runs through the 
charming valley of Zibah. We now had Mount Chiperiziwa 
between us, and part of the river near Morumbwa, having in 
fact come north about in order to avoid the difficulties of our 
former path. The last of the deserters, a reputed thief, took 
French leave of us here. He left the bundle of cloth he was 
carrying in the path a hundred yards in front of where we 
halted, but made off with the musket and most of the brass 
.rings and beads of his comrade Shirimba, who had unsus- 
pectingly intrusted them to his care. 



182 SANDIA. Chap. VII. 

Proceeding S.W. up this lovely valley, in about an hour's 
time we reached Sandia's village. The chief was said to be 
absent hunting, and they did not know when he would re- 
turn. This is such a common answer to the inquiry after a 
head man, that one is inclined to think that it only means 
that they wish to know the stranger's object before exposing 
their superior to danger. As some of our men were ill, a 
halt was made here. Sandia's people were very civil; a 
kinsman of his came to see us in the evening, bringing a 
large pot of beer; he did not like to see us eating with noth- 
ing to drink, so brought it as a present. When at a distance 
from those who are engaged in the slave-trade, there is much 
in the manners of the natives, and their ways of speaking, 
to remind us of the Patriarchs. The inhabitants of Zibah 
are Badema, and a wealthier class than those we have recent- 
ly passed, with more cloth, ornaments, food, and luxuries. 
Fowls, eggs, sugar-canes, sweet potatoes, ground-nuts, turmer- 
ic, tomatoes, chillies, rice, mapira (liolcus sorghum), and maize, 
were offered for sale in large quantities. The mapira may 
be called the corn of the country. It is known as Kaffir and 
Guinea corn in the south and west ; as dura in Egypt, and 
badjery in India: the grain is round and white, or reddish- 
white, about the size of the •hemp-seed given to canaries. 
Several hundred grains form a massive ear, on a stalk as 
thick as a common walking-staff, and from eight to eighteen 
feet high. Tobacco, hemp, and cotton were also cultivated, 
as, indeed, they are by all the people in Kebrabasa. In near- 
ly every village here, as in the Manganja hills, men are en- 
gaged in spinning and weaving cotton of excellent quality. 

As we were unable to march next morning, six of our 
young men, anxious to try their muskets, went off to hunt 
elephants. For several hours they saw nothing, and some of 



Chap. VII. ELEPHANT-HUNT— GAME LAW. 133 

them, getting tired, proposed to go to a village and buy food. 
"No!" said Mantlanyane, "we came to hunt, so let us go on." 
In a short time they fell in with a herd of cow elephants and 
calves. As soon as the first cow caught sight of the hunters 
on the rocks above her, she, with true motherly instinct, 
placed her young one between her fore legs for protection. 
The men were for scattering, and firing into the herd indis- 
criminately. "That won't do," cried Mantlanyane; "let us 
all fire at this one." The poor beast received a volley, and 
ran down into the plain, where another shot killed her ,■ the 
young one escaped with the herd. The men were wild with 
excitement, and danced round the fallen queen of the forest, 
with loud shouts and exultant songs. They returned, bear- 
ing as trophies the tail and part of the trunk, and marched 
into camp as erect as soldiers, and evidently feeling that their 
stature had increased considerably since the morning. 

Sandia's wife was duly informed of their success, as here 
a law decrees that half the elephant belongs to the chief on 
whose ground it has been killed. The Portuguese traders 
always submit to this tax, and, were it of native origin, it 
could hardly be considered unjust. A chief must have some 
source of revenue ; and, as many chiefs can raise none except 
from ivory or slaves, this tax is more free from objections 
than any other that a black Chancellor of the Exchequer 
could devise. It seems, however, to have originated with the 
Portuguse themselves, and then to have spread among the 
adjacent tribes. The governors look sharply after any ele- 
phant that may be slain on the crown lands, and demand one 
of the tusks from their vassals. We did not find the law in 
operation in any tribe beyond the range of Portuguese trad- 
ers, or farther than the sphere of travel of those Arabs who 
imitated Portuguese customs in trade. At the Kafue in 



184 CUTTING UP AN ELEPHANT. Chap. VII. 

1855 the chiefs bought the meat we killed, and demanded 
nothing as their due ; and so it was up the Shire during our 
visits. The slaves of the Portuguese, who are sent by their 
masters to shoot elephants, probably connive at the extension 
of this law, for they strive to get the good will of the chiefs 
to whose country they come by advising them to make a de- 
mand of half of each elephant killed, and for this advice they 
are well paid in beer. When we found that the Portuguese 
argued in favor of this law, we told the natives that they 
might exact tusks from them, but that the English, being dif- 
ferent, preferred the pure native custom. It was this which 
made Sandia, as afterward mentioned, hesitate; but we did 
not care to insist on exemption in our favor, where the prev- 
alence of the custom might have been held to justify the ex- 
action. 

Sandia's wife said that she had sent a messenger to her 
husband on the day of our arrival, and soon expected his re- 
turn ; but that some of his people would go with our men in 
the morning, and receive what we chose to give. We ac- 
companied our hunters across the Jiills to the elephant vale, 
north of Zibah. It was a beautiful valley covered with tall 
heavy -seeded grass, on which the elephants had been quietly 
feeding when attacked. We found the carcass undisturbed, 
an enormous mass of meat. 

The cutting up of an elephant is quite a unique spectacle. 
The men stand round the animal in dead silence, while the 
chief of the traveling party declares that, according to ancient 
law, the head and right hind leg belong to him who killed 
the beast, that is, to him who inflicted the first wound ; the 
left leg to him who delivered the second, or first touched the 
animal after it fell. The meat around the eye to the English, 
or chief of the travelers, and different parts to the head men 



Chap. VII. 



THE IFE PLANT. 



185 



of the different fires, or groups, of which the camp is com- 
posed; not forgetting to enjoin the preservation of the fat 
and bowels for a second distribution. This oration finished, 
the natives soon become excited, and scream wildly as they 
cut away at the carcass with a score of spears, whose long 
handles quiver in the air above their heads. Their excite- 
ment becomes momentarily more and more intense, and 
reaches the culminating point when, as denoted by a roar of 
gas, the huge mass is laid fairly open. Some jump inside, 
and roll about there in their eagerness to seize the precious 
fat, while others run off, screaming, with pieces of the bloody 
meat, throw it on the grass, and run back for more : all keep 
talking and shouting at the utmost pitch of their voices. 
Sometimes two or three, regardless of all laws, seize the same 
piece of meat, and have a brief fight of words over it. Oc- 
casionally an agonized yell bursts forth, and a native emerges 
out of the moving mass of dead elephant and wriggling hu- 
manity with his hand badly cut by the spear of his excited 
friend and neighbor: this requires a rag and some soothing- 
words to prevent bad blood. In an incredibly short time 
tons of meat are cut up, and placed in separate heaps around. 
Sandia arrived soon after the beast was divided : he is an 
elderly man, and wears a wig made of ife fibre (sanseviera) 
dyed black, and of a fine glossy appearance. This plant is 
allied to the aloes, and its thick fleshy leaves, in shape some- 
what like our sedges, when bruised yield much fine strong 
fibre, which is made into ropes, nets, and wigs. It takes dyes 
readily, and the fibre might form a good article of commerce. 
Ife wigs, as we afterward saw, are not uncommon in this 
country, though perhaps not so common as hair wigs at 
home. Sandia's mosamela, or small carved wooden pillow, 
exactly resembling the ancient Egyptian one, was hung from 



186 SANDIA AND HIS CABINET. Chap. VII. 

the back of his neck: this pillow and a sleeping mat are usu- 
ally carried by natives when on hunting excursions. The 
chief visited the different camp-fires of our men, and accepted 
presents of meat from them ; but said that he should like to 
consume it with his elders, as he wished to consult them 
whether he ought to receive the half of the elephant from 
the Englishmen. His cabinet, seeing no good reason for de- 
parting from the established custom, concluded that it was 
best to treat white tax-payers as on a perfect equality with 
black ones, and to accept the half which belonged to Sandia's 
government. In the afternoon the chief returned with his 
counselors, accompanied by his wife and several other wom- 
en, carrying five pots of beer : three, he explained, were a 
present to the white men, and the other two were intended 
for sale. The women have a remarkably erect gait, proba- 
bly from having been accustomed from infancy to carry 
heavy water-pots on their heads. This brings all the mus- 
cles of the back into play, and might prove beneficial as a 
practice to those who are troubled with weakness of spine 
among ourselves. They use a piece of wood between the 
head and pot, perhaps for elegance. 

We had the elephant's fore foot cooked for ourselves in 
native fashion. A large hole was dug in the ground, in 
which a fire was made; and, when the inside was thoroughly 
heated, the entire foot was placed in it, and covered over 
with the hot ashes and soil; another fire was made above 
the whole, and kept burning all night. We had the foot 
thus cooked for breakfast next morning, and found it deli- 
cious. It is a whitish mass, slightly gelatinous, and sweet, 
like marrow. A long march, to prevent biliousness, is a wise 
precaution after a meal of elephant's foot. Elephant's trunk 
and tongue are also good, and, after long simmering, much 



Chap. VII. MODE OF MAKING PORRIDGE. 187 

resemble the hump of a buffalo and the tongue of an ox"; 
but all the other meat is tough, and, form its peculiar flavor, 
only to be eaten by a hungry man. The quantities of meat 
our men devour is quite astounding. They boil as much as 
their pots will hold, and eat till it becomes physically impos- 
sible for them to stow away any more. An uproarious dance 
follows, accompanied with stentorian song; and -as soon as 
they have shaken their first course down, and washed off the 
sweat and dust of the after performance, they go to work to 
roast more; a short snatch of sleep succeeds, and they are 
up and at it again ; all night long it is boil and eat, roast and 
devour, with a few brief interludes of sleep. Like other 
carnivora, these men can endure hunger for a much longer 
period than the mere porridge-eating tribes. Our men can 
cook meat as well as any reasonable traveler could desire ; 
and, boiled in earthen pots, like Indian chatties, it tastes 
much better than when cooked in iron ones., 

Their porridge is a failure, at least for a Scotch digestion 
that has'been impaired by fever. When on a journey, un- 
accompanied by women, as soon as the water is hot, they 
tumble in the meal by handfuls in rapid succession, until it 
becomes too thick to stir about, when it is whipped off 
the fire, and placed on the ground ; an assistant then holds 
the pot, while the cook, grasping the stick with both hands, 
exerts his utmost strength in giving it a number of circular 
turns, to mix and prevent the solid mass from being burnt 
by the heat. It is then served up to us, the cook retaining 
the usual perquisite of as much as can be induced to adhere 
to the stick when he takes it from the pot. By this process 
the meal is merely moistened and warmed, but not boiled ; 
much of it being raw, it always causes heartburn. This is 
the only mode that the natives have of cooking the mapira 



188 LEAVE THE ELEPHANT VALLEY. Chap. VII. 

meal. They seldom, if ever, bake it into cakes like oatmeal ; 
for, though finely ground and beautifully white, it will not 
cohere readily. Maize meal is formed into dough more 
readily, but that too is inferior to wheaten flour, or even oat- 
meal, for baking. It was rather difficult to persuade the 
men to boil the porridge for us more patiently; and they 
became witty, and joked us for being like women, when the 
weakness of fever compelled us to pay some attention to the 
cooking, evidently thinking that it was beneath the dignity 
of white men to stoop to such matters. They look upon the 
meal and water porridge of the black tribes as the English 
used to do upon the French frogs, and call the eaters " mere 
water-porridge fellows," while the Makololo's meal and milk 
porridge takes the character of English roast-beef. 

Saiidia gave us two guides ; and on the 4th of June we 
left the elephant valley, taking a westerly course ; and, after 
crossing a few ridges, entered the Chingerere or Parguru- 
guru valley, through which, in the rainy season, runs the 
streamlet Pajodze. The mountains on our left, between us 
and the Zambesi, our guides told us have the same name as 
the valley, but that at the confluence of the Pajodze is called 
Morumbwa. We struck the river at less than half a mile to 
the north of the cataract Morumbwa. On climbing up the 
base of this mountain at Pajodze, we found that we were dis- 
tant only the diameter of the mountain from the cataract. 
In measuring the cataract we formerly stood on its southern 
flank; now we were perched on its northern flank, and at 
once recognized the onion-shaped mountain, here called Za- 
kavuma, whose smooth convex surface overlooks the broken 
water. Its bearing by compass was 180° from the spot to 
which we had climbed, and 700 or 800 yards distant. "We 
now, from this standing -point, therefore, completed our in- 



Chap. VII. A BANYAI HEAD MAN'S DEMAND. I39 

spection of all Kebrabasa, and saw what, as a whole, was 
never before seen by Europeans, so far as any records show. 
The difference of level between Pajodze and Tette, as 
shown by the barometer, was about 160 feet; but it must be 
remembered that we had no simultaneous observations at 
the two stations. The somewhat conical shape of Zakavu- 
ma standing on the right, and the more castellated form of 
Morumbwa on the left, constitute the narrow gateway in 
which the cataract exists. The talus of each portal, keeping 
close together northward, makes a narrow, upright -sided 
trough from the cataract up to Pajodze. The deep green 
river winds in it among massive black angular rocks ; above 
this, as far as Chicova, the Zambesi again has a flood bed 
and a deep water-worn groove, like that near the lower end 
of Kebrabasa, but the flood bed is only 200 or 300 yards 
broad, and the stream in this part of the groove is adorned 
in various places with the white foam of a number of small 
rapids. By the motion of pieces of wood in the water, and 
timed by a watch, the current was ascertained to be from 
3*3 to 4'1 knots per hour in the more rapid places. We 
breakfasted a short distance above Pajodze. At a compara- 
tively smooth part of the Zambesi, called Movuzi, still far- 
ther up, where traders sometimes cross from the southern to 
the northern bank, a Banyai head man came over with a 
dozen armed followers, and in an insolent way demanded 
payment for leave to pass on our way. This was not a 
friendly request for a present, so our men told him that it 
was not the custom of the English to pay fines for nothing ; 
and, being unsuccessful, he went quietly back again. One 
chief of the Banyai on the opposite bank is called Zuda, 
which the Portuguese translate into Judas, on account of his 
grasping propensities. Talking of us to some of our partj^, 



190 MAGNIFICENT MOUNTAIN SCENERY. Chap. VII. 

lie said, "These men passed me going down and gave me 
nothing; the English cloth is good; I am come to clothe 
myself with it now as they go up." His messenger came 
and sat down impudently in our midst before we rose from 
breakfast, and began an oration, not to us, but to his attend- 
ant. This talking at us roused the Makololo's ire, and they 
replied that " English cloth was good ; and Englishmen paid 
for all they ate. They were now walking on God's earth in 
peace, doing no harm to the country or gardens, though En- 
glish guns had six mouths, and English balls traveled far, 
and hit hard." However, by keeping on the left bank, we 
avoided collision with these troublesome and exacting Ban- 
yai. 

The remainder of the Kebrabasa path, on to Chicova, was 
close to the compressed and rocky river. Eanges of lofty 
tree-covered mountains, with deep narrow valleys, in which 
are dry water-courses, or flowing rivulets, stretch from the 
northwest, and are prolonged on the opposite side of the riv- 
er in a southeasterly direction. Looking back, the mount- 
ain scenery in Kebrabasa was magnificent : conspicuous from 
their form and steep sides are the two gigantic portals of the 
cataract ; the vast forests still wore their many brilliant au- 
tumnal-colored tints of green, yellow, red, purple, and brown, 
thrown into relief by the gray bark of the trunks in the 
background. Among these variegated trees were some con- 
spicuous for their new livery of fresh light green leaves, as 
though the winter of others was their spring. The bright 
sunshine in these mountain forests, and the ever -changing 
forms of the cloud shadows, gliding over portions of the sur- 
face, added fresh charms to scenes already surpassingly beau- 
tiful. 

From what we have seen of the Kebrabasa rocks and rap- 



Chap. VII. SANDIA'S REPORT OF KEBRABASA. 191 

ids, it appears too evident that they must always form a bar- 
rier to navigation at the ordinary low water of the river ; 
but the rise of the water in this gorge being as much as 
eighty feet perpendicularly, it is probable that a steamer 
might be taken up at high flood, when all the rapids are 
smoothed over, to run on the upper Zambesi. The most for- 
midable cataract in it, Morumbwa, has only about twenty 
feet of fall in a distance of thirty yards, and it must entirely 
disappear when the water stands eighty feet higher. Those 
of the Makololo who worked on board the ship were not 
sorry at the steamer being left below, as they had become 
heartily tired of cutting the wood that the insatiable furnace 
of the " Asthmatic" required. Mbia, who was a bit of a wag, 
laughingly exclaimed in broken English, " Oh, Kebrabasa 
good, very good ; no let shippee up to Sekeletu, too muchee 
work, cuttee woodyee, cuttee woodyee: Kebrabasa good." 
It is currently reported and commonly believed that once 
upon a time a Portuguese named Jose Pedra — by the natives 
called Nyamatimbira — chief, or capitao mor, of Zumbo, a 
man of large enterprise and small humanity, being anxious 
to ascertain if Kebrabasa could be navigated, made two slaves 
fast to a canoe, and launched it from Chicova into Kebrabasa, 
in order to see if it would come out at the other end. As 
neither slaves nor canoe ever appeared again, his excellency 
concluded that Kebrabasa was unnavigable, A trader had 
a large canoe swept away by a sudden rise of the river, and 
it was found without damage below ; but the most satisfac- 
tory information was that of old Sandia, who asserted that in 
flood all Kebrabasa became quite smooth, and he had often 
seen it so. 



192 MODE OF MAKING FIRE. Chap. VIIL 



CHAPTEK VIIL 

Pass from Kebrabasa on to Chicova on the 7th of June, 1860. — Native Trav- 
elers' Mode of making Fire. — Night Arrangements of the Camp. — Native 
Names of Stars. — Moon-blindness. — Our volunteer Fireman. — Native polit- 
ical Discussions. — Our Manner of Marching. — Not to make Toil of a Pleas- 
ure. — The Civilized show more endurance than the Uncivilized. — Chitora's 
Politeness. — Filtered Water preferred by native Women. — Whites Hobgob- 
lins to the Blacks. — The fear of Man on wild Animals. — First Impressions 
of a Donkey's local Powers. 

We emerged from the thirty -five or forty miles of Kebra- 
basa hills into the Chicova plains on the 7th of June, 1860, 
having made short marches all the way. The cold nights 
caused some of our men to cough badly, and colds in this 
country almost invariably become fever. The Zambesi sud- 
denly expands at Chicova, and resumes the size and appear- 
ance it has at Tette. Near this point we found a large seam 
of coal exposed in the left bank. 

We met with native travelers occasionally. Those on a 
long journey carry with them a sleeping-mat and wooden pil- 
low, cooking-pot and bag of meal, pipe and tobacco-pouch, 
a knife, bow and arrows, and two small sticks, of from two 
to three feet in length, for making fire, when obliged to sleep 
away from human habitations. Dry wood is always abund- 
ant, and they get fire by the following method. A notch is 
cut in one of the sticks, which, with a close-grained outside, 
has a small core of pith, and this notched stick is laid hori- 
zontally on a knife-blade on the ground; the operator, squat- 
ting, places his great toes on each end to keep all steady, and 
taking the other wand, which is of very hard wood cut to a 



Chap. VIII NIGHT ARRANGEMENTS OF THE CAMP. 193 

blunt point, fits it into the notch at right angles ; the upright 
wand is made to spin rapidly backward and forward between 
the palms of the hands, drill fashion, and at the same time is 
pressed downward ; the friction, in the course of a minute or 
so, ignites portions of the pith of the notched stick, which, 
rolling over like live charcoal on the knife-blade, are lifted 
into a handful of fine dry grass, and carefully blown, by 
waving backward and forward in the air. It is hard work 
for the hands to procure fire by this process, as the vigorous 
drilling and downward pressure requisite soon blister soft 
palms. 

Having now entered a country where lions were numer- 
ous, our men began to pay greater attention to the arrange- 
ments of the camp at night. As they are accustomed to do 
with their chiefs, they place the white men in the centre ; 
Kanyata, his men, and the two donkeys, camp on our right; 
Tuba Mokoro's party of Bashubia are in front ; Masakasa, and 
Sininyane's body of Batoka, on the left; and in the rear six 
Tette men have their fires. In placing their fires they are 
careful to put them where the smoke will not blow in our 
faces. Soon after we halt, the spot for the English is se- 
lected, and all regulate their places accordingly, and deposit 
their burdens. The men take it by turns to cut some of the 
tall dry grass, and spread it for our beds on a spot either nat- 
urally level or smoothed by the hoe; some, appointed to car- 
ry our bedding, then bring our rugs and karosses, and place 
the three rugs in a row on the grass ; Dr. Livingstone's be- 
ing in the middle, Dr. Kirk's on the right, and Charles Liv- 
ingstone's on the left. Our bags, rifles, and revolvers are 
carefully placed at our heads, and a fire made near our feet. 
We have no tent nor covering of any kind except the 

branches of the tree under which we may happen to lie; and 

N 



191 MOON-BLINDNESS. Chap. VIII. 

it is a pretty sight to look up and see every branch, leaf, and 
twig of the tree stand out, reflected against the clear star- 
spangled and moonlit sky. The stars of the first magnitude 
have names which convey the same meaning over very wide 
tracts of country. Here, when Yenus comes out in the even- 
ings, she is called Ntanda, the eldest or first-born, and Man- 
jika, the first-born of morning, at other times: she has so 
much radiance when shining alone that she casts a shadow. 
Sirius is named Kuewa usiko, " drawer of night,'' because 
supposed to draw the whole night after it. The moon has 
no evil influence in this country, so far as we know. "We 
have lain and looked up at her, till sweet sleep closed our 
eyes, unharmed. Four or five of our men were affected with 
moon-blindness at Tette; though they had not slept out of 
doors there, they became so blind that their comrades had to 
guide their hands to the general dish of food ; the affection 
is unknown in their own country. When our posterity shall 
have discovered what it is which, distinct from foul smells, 
causes fever, and what, apart from the moon, causes men to 
be moon-struck, they will pity our dullness of perception. 

The men cut a very small quantity of grass for them- 
selves, and sleep in fumbas or sleeping-bags, which are double 
mats of palm-leaf, six feet long by four wide, and sewn to- 
gether round three parts of the square, and left open only on 
one side. They are used as a protection from the cold, wet, 
and musquitoes, and are entered as we should get into our 
beds, were the blankets nailed to the top, bottom, and one 
side of the bedstead. When they are all inside their fumbas, 
nothing is seen but sacks lying all about the different fires. 
At times two persons sleep inside one, which is, indeed, close 
packing. Matonga, one of the men, has volunteered to take 
the sole charge of our fire, and is to receive for his services 



Chap. VIII. OUR VOLUNTEER FIREMAN. 195 

the customary payment of the heads and necks of all the 
beasts we kill ; and, except on the days when only Guinea- 
fowl are shot, he thus gets abundance of food. He bears our 
fowl diet resignedly for a few days, and then, if no large 
game is killed, he comes and expostulates as seriously as he 
did with the lion that envied us our buffalo meat: "Morena, 
my lord, a hungry man can not fill his stomach with the 
head of a bird ; he is killed with hunger for want of meat, 
and will soon, from sheer weakness, be unable to carry the 
wood for the fire: he ought to have an entire bird to save 
him from dying of starvation." His request being reasona- 
ble, and Guinea-fowl abundant, it is of course complied with. 
Guinea-fowl are conveniently numerous on the Zambesi dur- 
ing the dry season ; they then collect in large flocks, and 
come daily to the river to drink, and roost at night on the 
tall acacia-trees on its banks. *We usually fall in with two 
or three flocks in the course of the day's march, and find that 
they are all fat, and in excellent condition. In a few spots, 
as at Shupanga, a second variety is found, which has a pretty 
black feathery crest, and is a much handsomer bird than the 
common one ; the native name is Khanga Tore, and its spots 
are a fine light blue. Naturalists call it Numida cnstata. 

A dozen fires are nightly kindled in the camp ; and these, 
being replenished from time to time by the men who are 
awakened by the cold, are kept burning until daylight. 
Abundance of dry hard wood is obtained with little trouble, 
and burns beautifully. After the great business of cooking 
and eating is over, all sit round the camp-fires, and engage in 
talking or singing. Every evening one of the Batoka plays 
his sansa, and continues at it until far into the night. He 
accompanies it with an extempore song, in which he re- 
hearses their deeds ever since they left their own country. 



196 MANNER OF MARCHING. Chap. VIII. 

At times animated political discussions spring up, and the 
amount of eloquence expended on these occasions is amazing. 
The whole camp is aroused, and the men shout to one anoth- 
er from the different fires ; while some, whose tongues are 
never heard on any other subject, now burst forth into im- 
passioned speech. The misgovernment of chiefs furnishes 
an inexhaustible theme. " We could govern ourselves bet- 
ter," they cry, "so what is the use of chiefs at all? they do 
not work. The chief is fat, and has plenty of wives ; while 
we, who do the hard work, have hunger, only one wife, or 
more likely none; now this must be bad, unjust, and wrong." 
All shout to this a loud "ehe," equivalent to our "Hear, 
hear." Next the head man Kanyata, and Tuba with his 
loud voice, are heard taking up the subject on the loyal side. 
" The chief is the father of the people ; can there be people 
without a father, eh ? God made the chief. Who says that 
the chief is not wise? He is wise; but his children are 
fools." Tuba goes on generally till he has silenced all oppo- 
sition ; and if his arguments are not always sound, his voice 
is the loudest, and he is sure to have the last word. 

As a specimen of our mode of marching, we rise about 
five, or, as soon as dawn appears, take a cup of tea and a bit 
of biscuit ; the servants fold up the blankets and stow them 
away in the bags they carry; the others tie their fumbas 
and cooking-pots to each end of their carrying-sticks, which 
are borne on the shoulders; the cook secures the dishes, 
and all are on the path by sunrise. If a convenient spot can 
be found, we halt for breakfast about nine A.M. To save 
time, this meal is generally cooked the night before, and has 
only to be warmed. We continue the march after breakfast, 
rest a little in the middle of the day, and break off early in 
the afternoon. We average from two to two and a half 



Chap. VIH. POWERS OF ENDURANCE. I97 

miles an hour in a straight line, or as the crow flies, and sel- 
dom have more than five or six hours a day of actual travel. 
This, in a hot climate, is as much as a man can accomplish 
without being oppressed ; and we always tried to make our 
progress more a pleasure than a toil. To hurry over the 
ground, abuse, and look ferocious at one's native companions, 
merely for the foolish vanity of boasting how quickly a dis- 
tance was accomplished, is a combination of silliness with ab- 
surdity quite odious ; while kindly consideration for the feel- 
ings of even blacks, the pleasure of observing scenery and 
every thing new as one moves on at an ordinary pace, and 
the participation in the most delicious rest with our fellows, 
render traveling delightful. Though not given to overhaste, 
we were a little surprised to find that we could tire our men 
out ; and even the head man, who carried but little more 
than we did, and never, as we often had to do, hunted in the 
afternoon, was no better than his comrades. Our experience 
tends to prove that the European constitution has a power 
of endurance, even in the tropics, greater than that of the 
hardiest of the meat-eating Africans. 

After pitching our camp, one or two of us usually go off 
to hunt, more as a matter of necessity than of pleasure, for 
the men, as well as ourselves, must have meat. We prefer 
to take a man with us to carry home the game, or lead the 
others to where it lies ; but, as they frequently grumble and 
complain of being tired, we do not particularly object to go- 
ing alone, except that it involves the extra labor of our 
making a second trip to show the men where the animal that 
has been shot is to be found. When it is a couple of miles 
off, it is rather fatiguing to have to go twice, more especially 
on the days when it is solely to supply their wants that, in- 
stead of resting ourselves, we go at all. Like those who per- 



198 CHICOVA PLAINS. Chap. VIII. 

form benevolent deeds at home, the tired hunter, though try- 
ing hard to live in charity with all men, is strongly tempted 
to give it up by bringing only sufficient meat for the three 
whites and leaving the rest, thus sending the " idle ungrate- 
ful poor" supperless to bed. And yet it is only by continu- 
ance in well-doing, even to the length of what the worldly- 
wise call weakness, that the conviction is produced any 
where that our motives are high, enough, to secure sincere 
respect. 

The Chicova plains are very fertile, have rich dark soil, 
and formerly supported a numerous population ; but desola- 
ting wars and slaving had swept away most of the inhabit- 
ants. In spite of a rank growth of weeds, cotton still re- 
mains in the deserted gardens of ruined villages. A jungle 
of mimosa, ebony, and " wait-a-bit" thorn lies between the 
Chicova flats and the cultivated plain, on which stand the 
villages of the chief Chitora. He brought us a present of 
food and drink, because, as he, with the innate politeness of 
an African, said, he " did not wish us to sleep hungry : he 
had heard of the doctor when he passed down, and had a 
great desire to see and converse with him ; but he was a 
child then, and could not speak in the presence of great men. 
He was glad that he had seen the English now, and was 
sorry that his people were away, or he should have made 
them cook for us." All his subsequent conduct showed him 
to be sincere. 

Many of the African women are particular about the wa- 
ter they use for drinking and cooking, and prefer that which 
is filtered through sand. To secure this, they scrape holes 
in the sand-banks beside the stream, and scoop up the water, 
which slowly filters through, rather than take it from the 
equally clear and limpid river. This practice is common in 



Chap. VIII. HORROR OF WHITE MEN. 19 9 

the Zambesi, the Bovuma, and Lake Nyassa; and some of 
the Portuguese at Tette have adopted the native custom, and 
send canoes to a low island in the middle of the river for 
water. Chitora's people also obtained their supply from 
shallow wells in the sandy bed of a small rivulet close to the 
village. The habit may have arisen from observing the un- 
healthiness of the main stream at certain seasons. During 
nearly nine months in the year, ordure is deposited around 
countless villages along the thousands of miles drained by 
the Zambesi. When the heavy rains come down, and sweep 
the vast fetid accumulation into the torrents, the water is 
polluted with filth ; and, but for the precaution mentioned, 
the natives would prove themselves as little fastidious as 
those in London who drink the abomination poured into the 
Thames by Reading and Oxford. It is no wonder that sail- 
ors suffered so much from fever after drinking African river 
water, before the present admirable system of condensing it 
was adopted in our navy. 

There must be something in the appearance of white men 
frightfully repulsive to the unsophisticated natives of Africa; 
for, on entering villages previously unvisited by Europeans, 
if we met a child coming quietly and unsuspectingly toward 
us, the moment he raised his ej^es and saw the men in 
" bags," he would take to his heels in an agony of terror, 
such as we might feel if we met a live Egyptian mummy at 
the door of the British Museum. Alarmed by the child's 
wild outcries, the mother rushes out of her hut, but darts 
back again at the first glimpse of the same fearful apparition. 
Dogs turn tail, and scour off in dismay ; and hens, abandon- 
ing their chickens, fly screaming to the tops of the houses. 
The so lately peaceful village becomes a scene of confusion 
and hubbub until calmed bv the laughing assurance of our 



200 WILD ANIMALS' FEAR OF MAN. Chap. VIIL 

men that white people do not eat black folks ; a joke having 
oftentimes greater influence in Africa than solemn assertions. 
Some of our young swells, on entering an African village, 
might experience a collapse of self-inflation at the sight of 
all the pretty girls fleeing from them as from hideous canni- 
bals, or by witnessing, as we have done, the conversion of 
themselves into public hobgoblins, the mammas holding 
naughty children away from them, and saying "Be good, or 
I shall call the white man to bite you." 

The scent of man is excessively terrible to game of all 
kinds, much more so, probably, than the sight of him. A 
herd of antelopes, a hundred yards off, gazed at us as we 
moved along the winding path, and timidly stood their 
ground until half our line had passed, but darted off the in- 
stant they "got the wind," or caught the flavor of those who 
had gone by. The sport is all up with the hunter who gets 
to the windward of the African beast, as it can not stand 
even the distant aroma of the human race, so much dreaded 
by all wild animals. Is this the fear and the dread of man, 
which the Almighty said to Noah was to be upon every 
beast of the field ? A lion may, while lying in wait for his 
prey, leap on a human being as he would on any other ani- 
mal, save a rhinoceros or an elephant, that happened to pass ; 
or a lioness, when she has cubs, might attack a man, who, 
passing " up the wind of her," had unconsciously, by his 
scent, alarmed her for the safety of her whelps ; or buffaloes 
and other animals might rush at a line of travelers on appre- 
hension of being surrounded by them, but neither beast nor 
snake will, as a general rule, turn on man except when 
wounded or by mistake. If gorillas, un wounded, advance to 
do battle with him, and beat their breasts in defiance, they 
are an exception to all wild beasts known to us. From the 



CiIap. VIII. DONKEYS' VOCAL POWERS. 201 

way an elephant runs at the first glance of man, it is inferred 
that this huge brute, though really king of beasts, would run 
even from a child. 

Our two donkeys caused as much admiration as the three 
white men. Great was the astonishment when one of the 
donkeys began to bray. The timid jumped more than if a 
lion had roared beside them. All were startled, and stared 
in mute amazement at the harsh-voiced one, till the last 
broken note was uttered; then, on being assured that noth- 
ing in particular was meant, they looked at each other, and 
burst into a loud laugh at their common surprise. When 
one donkey stimulated the other to try his vocal powers, the 
interest felt by the startled visitors must have equaled that 
of the Londoners when they first crowded to see the famous 
hippopotamus. 



202 SEAMS OF COAL. Chap. IX. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Seams of Coal under Tette gray Sandstone. — Use of Coal unknown to the 
Natives, — Mbia kills a Hippopotamus. — Traps and Pitfalls. — Sagacity of 
Elephants at Pitfalls. — White Ants and their Galleries. — Black Soldier-ants 
lord it over the White Ants. — Language of Ants. — Biting Ants. — Rogue 
Monkey respected. — Native Salt-making. — The Mountains. — Chikwanitsela. 
— Afflictions of Beasts. — The human Buffalo. — Mpende. — Chilondo. — Mo- 
naheng murdered. — Animals which have not been hunted with Fire-arms. — 
Pangola. — A rifle-loving Chief. — Undi and Fate of African Empires — Are 
Africans industrious ? — Arrive at Zumbo, on the Loangwa, on the 26th of 
June. — Eesults of no Government. — Murder of Mpangwe. — Sequasha. 

We were now, when we crossed the boundary rivulet ISTy- 
arnatarara, out of Chicova and among sandstone rocks, similar 
to those which prevail between Lupata and Kebrabasa. In 
the latter gorge, as already mentioned, igneous and syenitic 
masses have been acted on by some great fiery convulsion 
of nature ;• the strata are thrown into a huddled heap of con- 
fusion. The coal has of course disappeared in Kebrabasa, 
but is found again in Chicova. Tette gray sandstone is com- 
mon about Sinjere, and, wherever it is seen with fossil wood 
upon it, coal lies beneath, and here, as at Chicova, some 
seams crop out on the banks of the Zambesi. Looking 
southward, the country is open plain and woodland, with de- 
tached hills and mountains in the distance ; but the latter are 
too far off, the natives say, for them to know their names. 
The principal hills on our right, as we look up stream, are 
from six to twelve miles away, and occasionally they send 
down spurs to the river, with brooks flowing through their 
narrow valleys. The banks of the Zambesi show two well- 
defined terraces, the first, or lowest, being usually narrow, 



Chap. IX. MBIA KILLS A HIPPOPOTAMUS. 203 

and of great fertility, while the upper one is a dry grassy 
plain, a thorny jungle, or a mopane (Baiihinia) forest. One 
of these plains, near the Kafue, is covered with the large 
stumps and trunks of a petrified forest. We halted a couple 
of daj^s by the fine stream Sinjere, which comes from the 
Chiroby-roby hills, about eight miles to the north. Many 
lumps of coal, brought down by the rapid current, lie in its 
channel. The natives never seem to have discovered that 
coal would burn, and, when informed of the fact, shook their 
heads, smiled incredulously, and said "Kodi" (really), evident- 
ly regarding it as a mere traveler's tale. They were as- 
tounded to see it burning freely on our fire of wood. They 
told us that plenty of it was seen among the hills ; but, be- 
ing long ago aware that we were now in an immense coal- 
field, we did not care to examine it farther. Coal had been 
discovered to the south of this in 1856, and several seams 
were examined on the stream Eevubue, a few miles distant 
from Tette. This was evidently an extension of the same 
field, but the mineral was more bituminous. In an open fire 
it bubbled up, and gave out gas like good domestic coal. 

A dike of black basaltic rock, called Kakolole, crosses the 
river near the mouth of the Sinjere; but it has two open 
gateways in it of from sixty to eighty yards in breadth, and 
the channel is very deep. 

On a shallow sand-bank, under the dike, lay a herd of hip- 
popotami in fancied security. The young ones were playing 
with each other like young puppies, climbing on the backs 
of their dams, trying to take hold of one another by the jaws, 
and tumbling over into the water. Mbia, one of the Mako- 
lolo, waded across to within a dozen yards of the drowsy 
beasts, and shot the father of the herd ; who, being very fat, 
soon floated, and was secured at the village below. The 



204: 



A HEAD MAN'S VISIT. 



Chap. IX. 



head man of the village visited us while we were at breakfast. 
He wore a black ife wig and a printed shirt. After a short 




Group of Hippopotami. 

silence he said to Masakasa, "You are with the white people, 
so why do you not tell them to give me a cloth?" "We 
are strangers," answered Masakasa; " why do you not bring 
us some food ?" He took the plain hint, and brought us two 
fowls, in order that we should not report that in passing him 
we got nothing to eat ; and as usual, we gave a cloth in re- 
turn. In reference to the hippopotamus he would make no 
demand, but said he would take what we chose to give him. 
The men gorged themselves with meat for two days, and cut 
large quantities into long narrow strips, which they half 
dried and half roasted on wooden frames over the fire. 
Much game is taken in the neighborhood in pitfalls. Sharp- 
pointed stakes are set in the bottom, on which the game 
tumbles and gets impaled. The natives are careful to warn 



Chap. IX. TRAPS AND PITFALLS. 205 

strangers of these traps, and also of the poisoned beams sus- 
pended on the tall trees for the purpose of killing elephants 
and hippopotami. It is not difficult to detect the pitfalls 
after one's attention has been called to them ; but in places 
where they are careful to carry the earth off to a distance, 
and a person is not thinking of such things, a sudden de- 
scent of nine feet is an experience not easily forgotten by 
the traveler. The sensations of one thus instantaneously 
swallowed up by the earth are peculiar. A momentary sus- 
pension of consciousness is followed by the rustling sound 
of a shower of sand and dry grass, and the half-bewildered 
thought of where he is, and how he came into darkness. 
Reason awakes to assure him that he must have come down 
through that small opening of daylight overhead, and that 
he is now where a hippopotamus ought to have been. The 
descent of a hippopotamus pitfall is easy, like that of Aver- 
nus, but to get out again into the upper air is a work of la- 
bor. The sides are smooth and treacherous, and the cross 
reeds which support the covering break in the attempt to get 
out by clutching them. A cry from the depths is unheard 
by those around, and it is only by repeated and most desper- 
ate efforts that the buried alive can regain the upper world. 
At Tette we were told of a white hunter, of unusually small 
stature, who plumped into a pit while stalking a Guinea-fowl 
on a tree. It was the labor of an entire forenoon to get out ; 
and he was congratulating himself on his escape, and brush- 
ing off the clay from his clothes, when down he went into a 
second pit, which happened, as is often the case, to be close 
beside the first, and it was evening before he could work 
himself out of that. 

Elephants and buffaloes seldom return to the river by the 
same path on two successive nights, they become so appre- 



206 



ELEPHANTS— WHITE ANTS. 



Chap. IX. 



hensive of danger from this human art. An old elephant 
will walk in advance of the herd, and uncover the pits with 
his trunk, that the others may see the openings and tread on 
firm ground. Female elephants are generally the victims: 
more timid by nature than the males, and very motherly in 
their anxiety for their calves, they carry their trunks up, 
trying every breeze for fancied danger, which often, in reali- 
ty, lies at their feet. The tusker, fearing less, keeps his 
trunk down, and, warned in time by that exquisitely sensi- 
tive organ, takes heed to his ways. 

Our camp on the Sinjere stood under a wide -spreading 
wild fig-tree. From the numbers of this family, of large size, 
dotted over the country, the fig or banyan species would 
seem to have been held sacred in Africa from the remotest 
times. The soil teemed with white ants, whose clay tunnels, 




Tunnels of Ants. 



formed to screen them from the eyes of birds, thread over 
the ground, up the trunks of trees and along the branches, 



Chap. IX. BATTLE OF ANTS. 207 

from which the little architects clear away all rotten or dead 
wood. Very often the exact shape of branches is left in 
tunnels on the ground, and not a bit of the wood inside. 
The first night we passed here these destructive insects ate 
through our grass-beds, and attacked our blankets, and cer : 
tain large red-headed ones even bit our flesh. 

On some days not a single white ant is to be seen abroad ; 
and on others, and during certain hours, they appear out of 
doors in myriads, and work with extraordinary zeal and en- 
ergy in carrying bits of dried grass down into their nests. 
During these busy reaping-fits the lizards and birds have a 
good time of it, and enjoy a rich feast at the expense of thou- 
sands of hapless workmen ; and, when they swarm, they are 
caught in countless numbers by the natives, and their roasted 
bodies are spoken of in an unctuous manner as resembling- 
grains of soft rice fried in delicious fresh oil. 

A strong marauding party of large black ants attacked a 
nest of white ones near the camp : as the contest took place 
beneath the surface, we could not see the order of the battle ; 
but it soon became apparent that the blacks had gained the 
day, and sacked the white town, for they returned in tri- 
umph, bearing off the eggs, and choice bits of the bodies of 
the vanquished. A gift, analogous to that of language, has 
not been withheld from ants : if part of their building is de- 
stroyed, an official is seen coming out to examine the dam- 
age ; and, after a careful survey of the ruins, he chirrups a 
few clear and distinct notes, and a crowd of workers begin at 
once to repair the breach. When the work is completed, 
another order is given, and the workmen retire, as will ap- 
pear on removing the soft freshly-built portion. We tried 
to sleep one rainy night in a native hut, but could not, be- 
cause of attacks by the fighting battalions of a very small 



208 BITING ANTS. Chap. IX. 

species of formica, not more than one sixteenth of an inch in 
length. It soon became obvious that they were under regu- 
lar discipline, and even attempting to carry out the skillful 
plans and stratagems of some eminent leader. Our hands 
and necks were the first objects of attack. Large bodies of 
these little pests were massed in silence round the point to 
be assaulted. We could hear the sharp shrill word of com- 
mand two or three times repeated, though, until then, we had 
not believed in the vocal power of an ant ; the instant after 
we felt the storming hosts range over head and neck, biting 
the tender skin, clinging with a death-grip to the hair, and 
parting with their jaws rather than quit their hold. On our 
lying down again in the hope of their having been driven 
off, no sooner was the light out and all still, than the ma- 
noeuvre was repeated. Clear and audible orders were issued, 
and the assault renewed. It was as hard to sleep in that hut 
as in the trenches before Sebastopol. The white ant, being 
a vegetable feeder, devours articles of vegetable origin only, 
and leather, which by tanning is imbued with a vegetable 
flavor. "A man may be rich to-day and poor to-morrow 
from the ravages of white ants," said a Portuguese merchant. 
" If he gets sick, and unable to look after his goods, his 
slaves neglect them, and they are soon destroyed by these 
insects." The reddish ant, in the "West called drivers, cross- 
ed our path daily in solid columns an inch wide, and never 
did the pugnacity of either man or beast exceed theirs. It 
is a sufficient cause of war if you only approach them, even 
by accident. Some turn out of the ranks and stand with 
open mandibles, or, charging with extended jaws, bite with 
savage ferocity. When hunting, we lighted among them 
too often ; while we were intent on the game, and without a 
thought of ants, they quietly covered us from head to foot; 



Chap. IX. MONKEYS RESPECTED. 209 

then all began to bite at the same instant ; seizing a piece 
of the skin with their powerful pincers, they twisted them- 
selves round with it, as if determined to tear it out. Their 
bites are so terribly sharp that the bravest must run, and 
then strip to pick off those that still cling with their hooked 
jaws, as with steel forceps. This kind abounds in damp 
places, and is usually met with on the banks of streams. 
We have not heard of their actually killing any animal ex- 
cept the Python, and that only when gorged and quite le- 
thargic, but they soon clear away any dead animal matter; 
this appears to be their principal food, and their use in the 
economy of nature is clearly in the scavenger line. 

We started from the Sinjere on the 12th of June, our men 
carrying with them bundles of hippopotamus meat for sale 
and for future use. We rested 'for breakfast opposite the 
Kakolole dike, which confines the channel west of the Man- 
yerere Mountain. A rogue monkey, the largest by far that 
we ever saw, and very fat and tame, walked off leisurely 
from a garden as we approached. The monkey is a sacred 
animal in this region, and is never molested or killed, be- 
cause the people believe devoutly that the souls of their an- 
cestors now occupy these degraded forms, and anticipate that 
they themselves must, sooner or later, be transformed in like 
manner; a future as cheerless for the black as the spirit- 
rapper's heaven is for the whites. The gardens are sepa- 
rated from each other by a single row of small stones, a few 
handfuls of grass, or a slight furrow made by the hoe. Some 
are inclosed by a reed fence of the flimsiest construction, yet 
sufficient to keep out the ever wary hippopotamus, who 
dreads a trap. His extreme caution is taken advantage of 
by the women, who hang, as a miniature trap-beam, a kigelia 
fruit with a bit of stick in the end. This protects the maize, 
of which he is excessively fond. 





210 SALT-MAKING— MOUNTAINS. Chap. IX. 

The women are accustomed to transact business for them- 
selves. They accompany the men into camp, sell their own 
wares, and appear to be both fair traders, and modest, sensi- 
ble persons. Elsewhere they bring things for -sale on their 
heads, and J kneeling at a respectful distance, wait till their 
husbands or fathers, who have gone forward, choose to re- 
turn, and to take their goods, and barter for them. Perhaps, 
in this particular, the women here occupy the golden mean 
between the Manganja hill -tribes and the Jaggas of the 
north, who live on the mountain summits near Kilimanjaro. 
It is said that at the latter place the women do all the trad- 
ing, have regular markets, and will, on no account, allow a 
man to enter the market-place. 

The quantity of hippopotamus meat eaten by our men 
made some of them ill, and our marches were necessarily 
short. After three hours' travel on the 13th, we spent the 
remainder of the day at the village of Chasiribera, on a riv- 
ulet flowing through a beautiful valley to the north, which 
is bounded by magnificent mountain ranges. Pink we, or 
Mbingwe, otherwise Moeu, forms the southeastern angle of 
the range. On the 16th of June we were at the flourishing 
village of Senga, under the head man Manyame, which lies 
at the foot of the Mount Motemwa. Nearly all the mount- 
ains in this country are covered with open forest and grass, 
in color, according to the season, green or yellow. Many 
are between 2000 and 3000 feet high, with the sky line 
fringed with trees; the rocks show just sufficiently for one 
to observe their stratification or their granitic form, and, 
though not covered with dense masses of climbing plants, 
like those in moister eastern climates, there is still the idea 
conveyed that most of the steep sides are fertile, and none 
give the impression of that barrenness which, in northern 






Chap. IX. CHIKWANITSELA. 211 

mountains, suggests the idea that the bones of the world are 
sticking through its skin. 

The villagers reported that we were on the footsteps of a 
Portuguese half-caste, who, at Senga, lately tried to purchase 
ivory, but, in consequence of his having murdered a chief 
near Zumbo and twenty of his men, the people declined to 
trade with him. He threatened to take the ivory by force 
if they would not sell it ; but that same night the ivory and 
the women were spirited out of the village, and only a large 
body of armed men remained. The trader, fearing that he 
might come off second best if it came to blows, immediately 
departed. Chikwanitsela, or Sekuanangila, is the paramount 
chief of some fifty miles of the northern bank of the Zam- 
besi in this locality. He lives on the opposite, or southern 
side, and there his territory is still more extensive. We 
sent him a present from Senga, and were informed by a 
messenger next morning that he had a cough and could not 
come over to see us. " And has his present a cough too," 
remarked one of our party, " that it does not come to us ? 
Is this the way your chief treats strangers, receives their 
present, and sends them no food in return?" Our men 
thought Chikwanitsela an uncommonly stingy fellow; but, 
as it was possible that some of them might yet wish to re- 
turn this way, they did not like to scold him more than this, 
which was sufficiently to the point. 

Men and women were busily engaged in preparing the 
ground for the November planting. Large game was abund- 
ant ; herds of elephants and buffaloes came down to the 
river in the night, but were a long way off by daylight. 
They soon adopt this habit in places where they are hunted. 

The plains we travel over are constantly varying in 
breadth, according as the furrowed and wooded hills ap- 



212 AFFLICTIONS OF BEASTS. Chap. IX. 

proach or recede from the river. On the southern side we 
see the hill Bungwe, and the long, level, wooded ridge Ny- 
angombe, the first of a series bending from the S.E. to the 
1ST.W. past the Zambesi. We shot an old pallah on the 16th, 
and found that the poor animal had been visited with more 
than the usual share of animal afflictions. He was stone- 
blind in both eyes, had several tumors, and a broken leg, 
which showed no symptoms of ever having begun to heal. 
Wild animals sometimes suffer a great deal from disease, and 
wearily drag on a miserable existence before relieved of it 
by some ravenous beast. Once we drove off a maneless lion 
and lioness from a dead buffalo, which had been in the last 
stage of a decline. They had watched him staggering to 
the river to quench his thirst, and sprang on him as he was 
crawling up the bank. One had caught him by the throat, 
and the other by his high projecting backbone, which was 
broken by the lion's powerful fangs. The struggle, if any, 
must have been short. They had only eaten the intestines 
when we frightened them off. It is curious that this is the 
part that wild animals always begin with, and that it is also 
the first choice of our men. Were it not a wise arrangement 
that only the strongest males should continue the breed, one 
could hardly help pitying the solitary buffalo expelled from 
the herd for some physical blemish, or on account of the 
weakness of approaching old age. Banished from the soft- 
ening influences of female societ}^ he naturally becomes mo- 
rose and savage ; the necessary watchfulness against enemies 
is now never shared by others ; disgusted, he passes into a 
state of chronic war with all who enjoy life, and the sooner 
after his expulsion that he fills the lion's or the wild dog's 
maw, the better for himself and for the peace of the country. 
Though we are not disposed to be didactic, the idea of a 



Chap. IX. . MPENDE. 213 

crusty old bachelor or of a cantankerous husband will rise 
up in our minds ; to this human buffalo, at whose approach 
wife and children, or poor relations, hold their breath with 
awe, we can not extend one grain of pity, because it is not 
infirmity of temper this brute can plead, seeing that, when in 
the herd with his equals, he is invariably polite, and only ex- 
ercises his tyranny when with those who can not thrash him 
into -decency. 

"We encamped on the 20th of June at a spot where Dr. 
Livingstone, on his journey from the West to the East Coast, 
was formerly menaced by a chief named Mpende. No of- 
fense had been committed against him, but he had fire-arms, 
and, with the express object of showing his power, he threat- 
ened to attack the strangers. Mpende's counselors having, 
however, found out that Dr. Livingstone belonged to a tribe 
of whom they had heard that "they loved the black man 
and did not make slaves," his conduct at once changed from 
enmity to kindness, and, as the place was one well selected 
for defense, it was perhaps quite as well for Mpende that he 
decided as he did. Three of his counselors now visited us, 
and we gave them a handsome present for their chief, who 
came himself next morning and made us a present of a goat, 
a basket of boiled maize, and another of vetches. A few 
miles above this, the head man, Chilondo of Nyamasusa, apol- 
ogized for not formerly lending us canoes. " He was absent, 
and his children were to blame for not telling him when the 
doctor passed ; he did not refuse the canoes." The sight of 
our men, now armed with muskets, had a great effect. 
Without any bullying, fire-arms command respect, and lead 
men to be reasonable who might otherwise feel disposed to 
be troublesome. Nothing, however, our fracas with Mpende 
excepted, could be more peaceful than our passage through 



214 MONAHENG MURDERED. Chap. IX. 

this tract of country in 1856. We then had nothing to ex- 
cite the cupidity of the people, and the men maintained 
themselves, either by selling elephant's meat, or by exhibit- 
ing feats of foreign dancing. Most of the people were very 
generous and friendly ; but the Banyai, nearer to Tette than 
this, stopped our march with a threatening war-dance. One 
of our party, terrified at this, ran away, as we thought, in- 
sane, and could not, after a painful search for three days, be 
found. The Banyai, evidently touched by our distress, al- 
lowed us to proceed. Through a man we left on an island 
a little below Mpende's, we subsequently learned that poor 
Monaheng had fled thither, and had been murdered by the 
head man for no reason except that he was defenseless. 
This head man had since become odious to his countrymen, 
and had been put to death by them. 

Our path leads frequently through vast expanses of ap- 
parently solitary scenery; a strange stillness pervades the 
air; no sound is heard from bird, or beast, or living thing; 
no village is near; the air is still, and earth and sky have 
sunk into a deep, sultry repose, and like a lonely ship on the 
desert sea is the long winding line of weary travelers on the 
hot, glaring plain. We discover that we are not alone in the 
wilderness ; other living forms are round about us, with cu- 
rious eyes on all our movements. As we enter a piece of 
woodland, an unexpected herd of pallahs, or waterbucks, sud- 
denly appears, standing as quiet and still as if constituting a 
part of the landscape ; or we pass a clump of thick thorns, 
and see through the bushes the dim, phantom-like forms of 
buffaloes, their heads lowered, gazing at us with fierce, un- 
tamable eyes. Again a sharp turn brings us upon a native, 
who has seen us from afar, and comes with noiseless foot- 
steps to get a nearer view. 



Chap. IX. P ANGOLA. 215 

On the 23d of June we entered Pangola's principal village, 
which is upward of a mile from the river. The ruins of a 
mud wall showed that a rude attempt had been made to imi- 
tate the Portuguese style of building. We established our- 
selves under a stately wild fig-tree, round whose trunk witch- 
craft medicine had been tied, to protect from thieves the 
honey of the wild bees, which had their hive in one of the 
limbs. This is a common device. The charm, or the medi- 
cine, is purchased of the dice doctors, and consists of a strip 
of palm-leaf smeared with something, and adorned with a few 
bits of grass, wood, or roots. It is tied round the tree, and is 
believed to have the power of inflicting disease and death on 
the thief who climbs over it. Superstition is thus not with- 
out its uses in certain states of society ; it prevents many 
crimes and misdemeanors which would occur but for the sal- 
utary fear that it produces. 

Pangola arrived, tipsy and talkative. " We are friends — 
we are great friends ; I have brought you a basket of green 
maize — here it is !" We thanked him, and handed him two 
fathoms of cotton cloth, four times the market value of his 
present. No, he would not take so small a present ; he 
wanted a double-barreled rifle — one of Dixon's best. "We 
are friends, you know; we are all friends together." But, 
although we were willing to admit that, we could not give 
him our best rifle, so he went off in high dudgeon. Early 
next morning, as we were commencing Divine service, Pan- 
gola returned, sober. We explained to him that we wished 
to worship God, and invited him to remain ; he seemed 
frightened, and retired; but, after service, he again impor- 
tuned us for the rifle. It was of no use telling him that we 
had a long journey before us, and needed it to kill game for 
ourselves. "He too must obtain meat for himself and peo- 



216 FATE OF AFRICAN EMPIRES. Chap. IX. 

pie, for they sometimes suffered from hunger." He then got 
sulky, and his people refused to sell food except at extrava- 
gant prices. Knowing that we had nothing to eat, they felt 
sure of starving us into compliance. But two of our young 
men, having gone off at sunrise, shot a fine waterbuck, and 
down came the provision market to the lowest figure; they 
even became eager to sell; but our men were angry with 
them for trying compulsion, and would not buy. Black 
greed had outwitted itself, as happens often with white cu- 
pidity ; and not only here did the traits of Africans remind 
xis of Anglo-Saxons elsewhere ; the notoriously ready world- 
wide disposition to take an unfair advantage of a man's ne- 
cessities shows that the same mean motives are pretty widely 
diffused among all races. It may not be granted that the 
same blood flows in all veins, or that all have descended 
from the same stock; but the traveler has no doubt that, 
practically, the white rogue and black are men and brothers. 
Pangola is the child or vassal of Mpende. Sandia and 
Mpende are the only independent chiefs from Kebrabasa to 
Zumbo, and belong to the tribe Manganja. The country 
north of the mountains here in sight from the Zambesi is 
called Senga, and its inhabitants Asenga or Basenga, but all 
appear to be of the same family as the rest of the Manganja 
and Maravi. Formerly all the Manganja were united under 
the government of their great chief, Undi, whose empire ex- 
tended from Lake Shirwa to the Eiver Loangwa ; but, after 
Undfs death, it fell to pieces, and a large portion of it on 
the Zambesi was absorbed by their powerful southern neigh- 
bors the Banyai. This has been the inevitable fate of every 
African empire from time immemorial. A chief of more 
than ordinary ability arises, and, subduing all his less power- 
ful neighbors, founds a kingdom, which he governs more or 



Chap. IX. ' AFRICAN INDUSTRY. 217 

less wisely till he dies. His successor, not having the talents 
of the conqueror, can not retain the dominion, and some of 
the abler under-chiefs set up for themselves, and, in a few- 
years, the remembrance only of the empire remains. This, 
which may be considered as the normal state of African so- 
ciety, gives rise to frequent and desolating wars, and the peo- 
ple long in vain for a power able to make all dwell in peace. 
In this light, a European colony would be considered by the 
natives as an inestimable boon to intertropical Africa. Thou- 
sands of industrious natives would gladly settle round it, 
and engage in that peaceful pursuit of agriculture and trade 
of which they are so fond, and, unclistracted by wars or ru- 
mors of wars, might listen to the purifying and ennobling 
truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Manganja on the 
Zambesi, like their countrymen on the Shire, are fond of 
agriculture ; and, in addition to the usual varieties of food, 
cultivate tobacco and cotton in quantities more than equal to 
their wants. To the question, "Would they work for Euro- 
peans?" an affirmative answer may be given if the Euro- 
peans belong to the class which can pay a reasonable price 
for labor, and not to that of adventurers who want employ- 
ment for themselves. All were particularly well clothed 
from Sandia's to Pangola's ; and it was noticed that all the 
cloth was of native manufacture, the product of their own 
looms. In Senga a great deaj. of iron is obtained from the 
ore and manufactured very cleverly. 

As is customary when a party of armed strangers visits 
the village, Pangola took the precaution of sleeping in one 
of the outlying hamlets. No one ever knows, or, at any rate, 
will tell where the chief sleeps. He came not next morning, 
so we went on our way ; but in a few moments we saw the 
rifle-loving chief approaching with some armed men. Be- 



218 DRUNKEN FERRYMEN. Chap. IX. 

fore meeting us, he left the path and drew up his "following" 
under a tree, expecting us to halt, and give him a chance 
of bothering us again ; but, having already had enough of 
that, we held right on : he seemed dumbfoundered, and could 
hardly believe his own eyes. For a few seconds he was 
speechless, but at last recovered so far as to be able to say, 
"You are passing Pangola. Do not you see Pangola?" 
Mbia was just going by at the time with the donkey, and, 
proud of every opportunity of airing his small stock of En- 
glish, shouted in reply, " All right ! then get on." " Click, 
click, click." This fellow, Pangola, would have annoyed and 
harassed a trader until his unreasonable demands were com- 
plied with. 

On the 26th of June we breakfasted at Zumbo, on the left 
bank of the Loangwa, near the ruins of some ancient Portu- 
guese houses. The Loangwa was too deep to be forded, and 
there were no canoes on our side. Seeing two small ones on 
the opposite shore, near a few recently-erected huts of two 
half-castes from Tette, we halted for the ferrymen to come 
over. From their movements, it was evident that they were 
in a state of rollicking drunkenness. Having a water-proof 
cloak, which could be inflated into a tiny boat, we sent Mant- 
lanyane across in it. Three half intoxicated slaves then 
brought us the shaky canoes, which we lashed together and 
manned with our own canoe f -men. Five men were all that 
we could carry over at a time ; and, after four trips had been 
made, the slaves began to clamor for drink. Not receiving 
any, as we had none to give, they grew more insolent, and 
declared that not another man should cross that day. Si- 
ninyane was remonstrating with them, when a loaded musket 
was presented at him by one of the trio. In an instant the 
gun was out of the rascal's hands, a rattling shower of blows 



Chap. IX. RESULTS OF NO GOVERNMENT. 219 

fell on his back, and he took an involuntary header into the 
river. He crawled up the bank a sad and sober man, and 
all three at once tumbled from the height of saucy swagger 
to a low depth of slavish abjectness. The musket was found 
to have an enormous charge, and might have blown our man 
to pieces but for the promptitude with which his companions 
administered justice in a lawless land. We were all ferried 
safely across by 8 o'clock in the evening. 

In illustration of what takes place where no government 
or law exists, the two half-castes, to whom these men be- 
longed, left Tette, with four hundred slaves, armed with the 
old Sepoy Brown Bess, to hunt elephants and trade in ivory. 
On our way up, we heard from natives of their lawless deeds, 
and again, on our way down, from several, who had been 
eyewitnesses of the principal crime, and all reports substan- 
tially agreed. The story is a sad one. After the traders 
reached Zumbo, one of them, called by the natives Sequasha, 
entered into a plot with the disaffected head man, Namaku- 
suru, to kill his chief, Mpangwe, in order that rTamakusuru 
might seize upon the chieftainship ; and for the murder of 
Mpangwe, the trader agreed to receive ten large tusks of 
ivory. Sequasha, with a picked party of armed slaves, went 
to visit Mpangwe, who received him kindly, and treated him 
with all the honor and hospitality usually shown to distin- 
guished strangers, and the women busied themselves in cook- 
ing the best of their provisions for the repast to be set be- 
fore him. Of this, and also of the beer, the half-caste par- 
took heartily. Mpangwe was then asked by Sequasha to al- 
low his men to fire their guns in amusement. Innocent of 
any suspicion of treachery, and anxious to hear the report 
of fire-arms, Mpangwe at once gave his consent ; and the 
.slaves rose and poured a murderous volley into the merry 



220 SEQUASHA. Chap. IX. 

group of unsuspecting spectators, instantly killing the chief 
and twenty of his people. The survivors fled in horror. 
The children and young women were seized as slaves, and 
the village sacked. Sequasha sent the message to Nama- 
kusuru: "I have killed the lion that troubled you: come 
and let us talk over the matter." He came, and brought the 
ivory. "No," said the half-caste, "let us divide the land;" 
and he took the larger share for himself, and compelled the 
would-be usurper to deliver up his bracelets in token of sub- 
jection on becoming the child or vassal of Sequasha. These 
were sent in triumph to the authorities at Tette. The Gov- 
ernor of Quillimane had told us that he had received orders 
from Lisbon to take advantage of our passing to re-establish 
Zumbo ; and, accordingly, these traders had built a small 
stockade on the rich plain of the right bank of Loangwa, a 
mile above the site of the ancient mission church of Zumbo, 
as part of the royal policy. The bloodshed was quite un- 
necessary, because, the land at Zumbo having of old been 
purchased, the natives would always, of their own accord, 
have acknowledged the right thus acquired; they pointed 
out to Dr. Livingstone in 1856 that, though they were culti- 
vating it, it was not theirs, but white man's land. Sequasha 
and his mate had left their ivory in charge of some of their 
slaves, who, in the absence of their masters, were now having 
a gay time of it, and getting drunk every day with the prod- 
uce of the sacked villages. The head slave came and begged 
for the musket of the delinquent ferryman, which was re- 
turned. He thought his master did perfectly right to kill 
Mpangwe, when asked to do it for the fee of ten tusks, and 
he even justified it thus: "If a man invites you to eat, will 
you not partake ?" 



Chap. X. CHURCH IN RUINS. 221 



CHAPTER X. 

Beautiful Situation of Zumbo.— Church in Ruins.— Why have the Catholic 
Missions failed to perpetuate the Faith?— Ma-mburuma. — Anti-slavery 
Principles a Recommendation.— Jujubes.— Tsetse.— Dr. Kirk dangerously 
ill in the Mountain Forest.— Our Men's feats of Hunting.— Hyenas.— Hon- 
ey-guides. — Instinct of, how to be accounted for, Self-interest or Friendship ? 
—A Serpent.— Mpangwe's Village deserted.— Large Game abundant.— Dif- 
ference of Flavor in.--Sights seen in Marching.— " Smokes" from Grass- 
burnings.— River Chongwe. — Bazizulu and their superior Cotton. — Escape 
from Rhinoceros.— The Wild Dog. —Families Flitting.— Tombanyama.— 
Confluence of the Kafue. 

We remained a day by the ruins of Zumbo. The early 
traders, guided probably by Jesuit missionaries, must have 
been men of taste and sagacity. They selected for their vil- 
lage the most charmingly picturesque site in the country, and 
had reason to hope that it would soon be enriched by the 
lucrative trade of the rivers Zambesi and Loangwa pouring 
into it from north and west, and by the gold and ivory of the 
Manica country on the south. The Portuguese of the present 
day have certainly reason to be proud of the enterprise of 
their ancestors. If ever in the Elysian fields the conversa- 
tion of these ancient and honorable men, who dared so much 
for Christianity, turns on their African descendants, it will be 
difficult for them to reciprocate the feeling. The chapel, 
near which lies a broken church bell, commands a glorious 
view of the two noble rivers — the green fields — the undula- 
ting forest — the pleasant hills, and the magnificent mount- 
ains in the distance. It is an utter ruin now, and desolation 
broods around. The wild bird, disturbed by the unwonted 
sound of approaching footsteps, rises with a harsh scream. 



222 MISSIONARY FAILURE. Chap. X. 

Thorn-bushes, marked with the ravages of white ants, rank 
grass with prickly barbed seeds, and noxious weeds, overrun 
the whole place. The foul hyena has denied the sanctuary, 
and the midnight owl has perched on its crumbling walls, to 
disgorge the undigested remnant of its prey. One can 
scarcely look without feelings of sadness on the utter deso- 
lation of a place where men have met to worship the Su- 
preme Being, or have united in uttering the magnificent 
words, "Thou art the King of glory, O Christ!" and remem- 
ber that the natives of this part know nothing of His relig- 
ion, not even His name. A strange superstition makes them 
shun this sacred place, as men do the pestilence, and they 
never come near it. Apart from the ruins, there is nothing 
to remind one that a Christian power ever had traders here, 
for the natives of to-day are precisely what their fathers were 
when the Portuguese first rounded the Cape. Their lan- 
guage, unless buried in the Yatican, is still unwritten. Not 
a single art, save that of distilling spirits by means of a gun- 
barrel, has ever been learned from the strangers ; and, if all 
the progeny of the whites were at once to leave the country, 
their only memorial would be the ruins of a few stone and 
mud-built walls, and that blighting relic of the slave-trade, 
the belief that man may sell his brother man; a belief which 
is not of native origin, for it is not found except in the track 
of the Portuguese. 

Since the early missionaries were not wanting in either 
wisdom or enterprise, it would be intensely interesting to 
know the exact cause of their failing to perpetuate their 
faith. Our observation of the operations of the systems, 
whether of native or of European origin, which sanction 
slavery, tends to prove that they only perpetuate barbarism. 
Raids like that of Sequasha — also of Simoens, who carried 



Chap. X. MA-MBUUUM A. 223 

his foray up the river as far as Kariba — and many others, 
have exactly the same effect as the normal native policy al- 
ready mentioned : one tract of country is devastated after 
another, and the slave-hunter attains great wealth and influ- 
ence. Pereira, the founder of Zumbo, gloried in being called 
" the Terror." If the scourge is not fleeced by some needy 
governor, his wealth is usually scattered to the winds by the 
children of mixed breed who succeed him. Can it be that 
the missionaries of old, like many good men formerly among 
ourselves, tolerated this system of slave-making, which inev- 
itably leads to warfare, and thus failed to obtain influence 
over the natives by not introducing another policy than that 
which had prevailed for ages before they came ? 

We continued our journey on the 28th of June. Game 
was extremely abundant, and there were many lions. Mbia 
drove one off from his feast on a wild pig, and appropriated 
what remained of the pork to his own use. Lions are par- 
ticularly fond of the flesh of wild pigs and zebras, and con- 
trive to kill a large number of these animals. In the after- 
noon we arrived at the village of the female chief Ma-mbu- 
ruma, but she herself was now living on the opposite side of 
the river. Some of her people called, and said she had been 
frightened by seeing her son and other children killed by 
Sequasha, and had fled to the other bank; but when her 
heart was healed, she would return and live in her own vil- 
lage, and among her own people. She constantly inquired 
of the black traders who came up the river if they had any 
news of the white man who passed with the oxen. "He 
has gone down into the sea," was their reply ; " but we be- 
long to the same people." " Oh no, you need not tell me 
that ; he takes no slaves, but wishes peace : you are not of 
his tribe." This anti-slavery character excites such univer- 



224 JUJUBE— TSETSE. Chap. X. 

sal attention, that any missionary who winked at the gigantic 
evils involved in the slave-trade would certainly fail to pro- 
duce any good impression on the native mind. 

"We left the river here, and proceeded up the valley which 
leads to the Mburuma or Mohango Pass. The nights were 
cold, and on the 30th of June the thermometer was as low as 
39° at sunrise. We passed through a village of twenty large 
huts, which Sequasha had attacked on his return from the 
murder of the chief Mpangwe. He caught the women and 
children for slaves, and carried off all the food except a huge 
basket of bran, which the natives are wont to save against a 
time of famine. His slaves had broken all the water-pots 
and the millstones for grinding meal. 

The buaze-trees and bamboos are now seen on the hills ; 
but the jujube or zisyphus, which has evidently been intro- 
duced from India, extends no farther up the river. We had 
been eating this fruit, which, having somewhat the taste of 
apples, the Portuguese call Macaas, all the way from Tette ; 
and here they were larger than usual, though immediately 
beyond they ceased to be found. No mango-tree either is 
to be met with beyond this point, because the Portuguese 
traders never established themselves any where beyond Zum- 
bo. Tsetse flies are more numerous and troublesome than 
we have ever before found them. They accompany us on 
the march, often buzzing round our heads like a swarm of 
bees. They are very cunning, and when intending to bite, 
alight so gently that their presence is not perceived till they 
thrust in their lance-like proboscis. The bite is acute, but 
the pain is over in a moment ; it is followed by a little of the 
disagreeable itching of the musquito's bite. This fly invari- 
ably kills all domestic animals except goats and donkeys; 
man and the wild animals escape. We ourselves were se- 



Chap. X. ILLNESS OF DR. KIRK. 225 

verely bitten on this pass, and so were our donkeys, but nei- 
ther suffered from any after effects. 

Water is scarce in the Mburuma Pass except during the 
rainy reason. We however halted beside some fine springs 
in the bed of the now dry rivulet Podebode, which is con- 
tinued down to the end of the Pass, and yields water at in- 
tervals in pools. Here we remained a couple of days in con- 
sequence of the severe illness of Dr. Kirk. He had several 
times been attacked by fever, and observed that when we 
were on the cool heights he was comfortable, but when we 
happened to descend from a high to a lower altitude, he felt 
chilly, though the temperature in the latter case was 25° 
higher than it was above. He had been trying different 
medicines of reputed efficacy with a view to ascertain wheth- 
er other combinations might not be superior to the prepara- 
tion we generally used. In halting by this water, he sud- 
denly became blind, and unable to stand from faintness. The 
men, with great alacrity, prepared a grassy bed, on which we 
laid our companion, with the sad forebodings which only 
those who have tended the sick in a wild country can realize. 
We feared that in experimenting he had overdrugged him- 
self; but we gave him a dose of our fever pills; on the third 
day he rode the one of the two donkeys that would allow it- 
self to be mounted, and on the sixth he marched as well as 
any of us. This case is mentioned in order to illustrate what 
we have often observed, that moving the patient from place 
to place is most conducive to the cure ; and the more pluck 
a man has — the less he gives in to the disease — the less like- 
ly he is to die. 

Supplied with water by the pools in the Podebode, we 
again joined the Zambezi at the confluence of the rivulet. 
When passing through a dry district the native hunter 



226 HUNTING THE BUFFALO. Chap. X. 

knows where to expect water by the animals he sees. The 
presence of the gemsbuck, duiker or diver, springbucks, or 
elephants, is no proof that water is near ; for these animals 
roam over vast tracts of country, and may be met scores of 
miles from it. Not so, however, the zebra, pallah, buffalo, 
and rhinoceros ; their spoor gives assurance that water is not 
far off, as they never stray any distance from its neighbor- 
hood ; but when, amid the solemn stillness of the woods, the 
singing of joyous birds falls upon the ear, it is certain that 
water is close at hand. While waiting here, under a great 
tamarind-tree, we heard many new and pleasant songs from 
strange little birds, with the love-notes of pigeons, in the trees 
overhanging these living springs. 

Our men, in hunting, came on an immense herd of buffa- 
loes quietly resting in the long dry grass, and began to blaze 
away furiously at the astonished animals. In the wild ex- 
citement of the hunt, which heretofore had been conducted 
with spears, some forgot to load with ball, and, firing away 
vigorously with powder only, wondered for the moment that 
the buffaloes did not fall. The slayer of the young elephant, 
having buried his four bullets in as many buffaloes, fired 
three charges of number 1 shot he had for killing Guinea- 
fowl. The quaint remarks and merriment after these little 
adventures seemed to the listener like the pleasant prattle of 
children. Mbia and Mantlanyane, however, killed one buf- 
falo each ; both the beasts were in prime condition ; the meat 
was like really excellent beef, with a smack of venison. A 
troop of hungry, howling hyenas also thought the savor 
tempting, as they hung round the camp at night, anxious to 
partake of the feast. They are, fortunately, arrant cowards, 
and never attack either men or bea§ts except they can catch 
them asleep, sick, or at some other disadvantage. With a 



Chap. X. THE HONEY-GUIDE. 227 

bright fire at our feet their presence excites no uneasiness. 
A piece of meat hung on a tree high enough to make him 
jump to reach it, and a short spear, with its handle firmly 
planted in the ground beneath, are used as a device to induce 
the hyena to commit suicide by the impalement. 

The honey-guide is an extraordinary bird ; how is it that 
every member of its family has learned that all men, white 
or black, are fond of honey ? The instant the little fellow 
gets a glimpse of a man, he hastens to greet him with the 
hearty invitation to come, as Mbia translated it, to a bees' 
hive, and take some honey. He flies on in the proper direc- 
tion, perches on a tree, and looks back to see if you are fol- 
lowing ; then on to another and another, until he guides you 
to the spot. If you do not accept his first invitation he fol- 
lows you with pressing importunities, quite as anxious to 
lure the stranger to the bees' hive as other birds are »to draw 
him away from their own nests. Except while on the 
march, our men were su-re to accept the invitation, and mani- 
fested the same by a peculiar responsive whistle, meaning, 
as they said, "All right; go ahead; we are coming." The 
bird never deceived them, but always guided them to a hive 
of bees, though some had but little honey in store. Has this 
peculiar habit of the honey-guide its origin, as the attach- 
ment of dogs, in friendship for man, or in love for* the sweet 
pickings of the plunder left on the ground? Self-interest 
aiding in preservation from danger seems to be the rule in 
most cases, as, for instance, in the bird that guards the buf- 
falo and rhinoceros. The grass is often so tall and dense 
that one could go close up to these animals quite unper- 
ceived ; , but the guardian bird, sitting on the beast, sees the 
approach of danger, flaps its wings and screams, which causes 
its bulky charge to rush off from a foe he has neither seen 



228 ABUNDANCE OF GAME. Chap. X. 

nor heard ; for his reward the vigilant little watcher has the 
pick of the parasites of his fat friend. In other cases a 
v chance of escape must be given even by the animal itself to 
its prey ; as in the rattlesnake, which, when excited to strike, 
can not avoid using his rattle any more than the cat can re- 
sist curling its tail when excited in the chase of a mouse, or 
the cobra can refrain from inflating the loose skin of the 
neck, and extending it laterally, before striking its poison 
fangs into its victim. There were many snakes in parts of 
this pass ; they basked in the warm sunshine, but rustled off 
through the leaves as we approached. We observed one 
morning a small one of a deadly poisonous species, named 
Kakone, on a bush by the wayside, quietly resting in a hor- 
izontal position, digesting a lizard for breakfast. Though 
openly in view, its colors and curves so closely resembled a 
small branch that some failed to see it, even after being 
asked if they perceived any thing on the bush. Here also 
one of our number had a glance at another species, rarely 
seen, and whqse swift, lightning-like motion has given rise to 
the native proverb, that when a man sees this snake he will 
forthwith become a rich man. 

We slept near the ruined village of the murdered chief 
Mpangwe, a lovely spot, with the Zambesi in front, and ex- 
tensive gardens behind, backed by a semicircle of hills, re- 
ceding up to lofty mountains. Our path kept these mount- 
ains on our right, and crossed several streamlets, which seem- 
ed to be perennial, and among others the Selole, which ap- 
parently flows past the prominent peak Chiarapela. These 
rivulets have often human dwellings on their banks, but the 
land can scarcely be said to be occupied. The number of all 
sorts of game increases wonderfully every day. As a speci- 
men of what may be met with where there are no human 



Chap. X. ANNOYED WITH TSETSE. 229 

habitations, and where no fire-arms have been introduced, 
we may mention what at times has actually been seen by us. 
On the morning of July 3d a herd of elephants passed with- 
in fifty yards of our sleeping-place, going down to the river 
along the dry bed of a rivulet. Starting a few minutes be- 
fore the main body> we come upon large flocks of Guinea- 
fowl, shoot what may be wanted for dinner or next morn- 
ing's breakfast, and leave them in the path to be picked up 
by the cook and his mates behind. As we proceed, franco- 
lins of three varieties run across the path, and hundreds of 
turtle-doves rise, with great blatter of wing, and fly off to the 
trees. Guinea-fowls, francolins, turtle-doves, ducks, and geese 
are the game birds of this region. At sunrise a herd of pal- 
labs, standing like a flock of sheep, allow the first man of 
our long Indian file to approach within fifty yards; but, 
having meat, we let them trot off leisurely and unmolested. 
Soon afterward we come upon a herd of waterbucks, which 
here are very much darker in color and drier in flesh than 
the same species near the sea. They look at us and we at 
them, and we pass on to see a herd of doe koodoos, with a 
magnificently horned buck or two, hurrying off to the dry 
hill-sides. We have ceased shooting antelopes, as our men 
have been so often gorged with meat that they have become 
fat and dainty. They say that they do not want more veni- 
son, it is so dry and tasteless, and ask why we do not give 
them shot to shoot the more savory Guinea-fowl. 

About eight o'clock the tsetse commence to buzz about 
us, and bite our hands and necks sharply. Just as we are 
thinking of breakfast, we meet some buffaloes grazing by the 
path ; but they make off in a heavy gallop at the sight of 
man. We fire, and the foremost, badly wounded, separates 
from the herd, and is seen to stop among the trees ; but, as 



230 ZEBKAS— WILD PIGS. Chap. X. 

it is a matter of great danger to follow a wounded buffalo, 
we hold on our way. It is this losing of wounded animals 
which makes fire-arms so annihilating to these beasts of the 
field, and will in time sweep them all away. The small En- 
field bullet is worse than the old round one for this. It oft- 
en goes through an animal without killing him, and he after- 
ward perishes when he is of no value to man. After break- 
fast we draw near a pond of water ; a couple of elephants 
stand on its bank, and at a respectful distance behind these 
monarchs of the wilderness is seen a herd of zebras, and 
another of waterbucks. On getting our wind the royal 
beasts make off at once, but the zebras remain till the fore- 
most man is within eighty yards of them, when old and 
young canter gracefully away. The zebra has a great deal 
of curiosity, and this is often fatal to him, for he has the hab- 
it of stopping to look at the hunter. In this particular he is 
the exact opposite of the diver antelope, which rushes off 
like the wind, and never for a moment stops to look behind 
after having once seen or smelt danger. The finest zebra of 
the herd is sometimes shot, our men having taken a sudden 
fancy to the flesh, which all declare to be the " king of good 
meat." On the plains of short grass between us and the riv- 
er many antelopes of different species are calmly grazing or 
reposing. Wild pigs are common, and walk abroad during 
the day, but are so shy as seldom to allow a close approach. 
On taking alarm they erect their slender tails in the air, and 
trot off swiftly in a straight line, keeping their bodies as 
steady as a locomotive on a railroad. A mile beyond the 
pool, three cow buffaloes, with their calves, come from the 
woods, and move out into the plain. A troop of monkeys, 
on the edge of the forest, scamper back to its depths on hear- 
ing the loud song of Singeleka, and old surly fellows, catch- 



Chap. X. " SMOKES"— BAZIZULU. 281 

ing sight of the human party, insult it with a loud and angry 
bark. Early in the afternoon we may see buffaloes again, 
or other animals. We camp on the dry higher ground, after, 
as has happened, driving off a solitary elephant. The nights 
are warmer now, and possess nearly as much of interest and 
novelty as the days. A new world awakes and comes forth, 
more numerous, if we may judge by the noise it makes, than 
that which is abroad by sunlight. Lions and hyenas roar 
around us, and sometimes come disagreeably near, though 
they have never ventured into our midst. Strange birds 
sing their agreeable songs, while others scream and call 
harshly as if in fear or anger. Marvelous insect-sounds fall 
upon the ear ; one, said by natives to proceed from a large 
beetle, resembles a succession of measured musical blows 
upon an anvil, while many others are perfectly indescribable. 
A little lemur was once seen to leap about from branch to 
branch with the agility of a frog; it chirruped like a bird, 
and is not larger than a robin-red-breast. Eeptiles, though 
numerous, seldom troubled us; only two men suffered from 
stings, and that very slightly, during the entire journey ; the 
one supposed that he was bitten by a snake, and the other 
was stung by a scorpion. 

Grass-burning has begun, and is producing the blue hazy 
atmosphere of the American Indian summer, which in West- 
ern Africa is called the " smokes." Miles of fire burn on the 
mountain sides in the evenings, but go out during the night. 
From their height they resemble a broad zigzag line of fire 
in the heavens. 

We slept on the night of the 6th of July on the left bank 
of the Chongwe, which comes through a gap in the hills on 
our right, and is twenty yards wide. A small tribe of the 
Bazizulu, from the south, under Dadanga, have recently set- 



232 ESCAPE FROM RHINOCEROS. Chap. X. 

tied here and built a village. Some of their houses are 
square, and they seem to be on friendly terms with the Ba- 
koa, who own the country. They, like the other natives, 
cultivate cotton, but of a different species from any we have 
yet seen in Africa, the staple being very long, and the boll 
larger than what is usually met with ; the seeds cohere as in 
the Pernambuco kind. They brought the seed with them 
from their own country, the distant mountains of which in 
the south, still inhabited by their fellow-countrymen, who 
possess much cattle, and use shields, can be seen from this 
high ground. These people profess to be children of the 
great paramount chief Kwanyakarombe, who is said to be 
lord of all the Bazizulu. The name of this tribe is known 
to geographers, who derive their information from the Port- 
uguese, as the Morusurus, and the hills mentioned above are 
said to have been the country of Changamira, the warrior- 
chief of history, whom no Portuguese ever dared to ap- 
proach. The Bazizulu seem, by report, to be brave mount- 
aineers; nearer the river, the Sidima inhabit the plains; just 
as on the north side the Babimpe live on the heights, about 
two days off, and the Makoa on or near the river. The chief 
of the Bazizulu we were now with was hospitable and friend- 
ly. A herd of buffaloes came trampling through the gar- 
dens and roused up our men, a feat that roaring lions seldom 
achieved. 

Our course next day passed over the upper terrace and 
through a dense thorny jungle. Traveling is always diffi- 
cult where there is no path, but it is even more perplexing 
where the forest is cut up by many game-tracks. Here we 
got separated from one another, and a rhinoceros with angry 
snort dashed at Dr. Livingstone as he stooped to pick up a 
specimen of the wild fruit morula; but she strangely stopped 



Chap. X. THE WILD DOG. 233 

stock-still when less than her own length distant, and gave 
him time to escape ; a branch pulled out his watch as he ran, 
and, turning half round to grasp it, he got a distant glance of 
her and her calf still standing on the selfsame spot, as if 
arrested in the middle of her charge by an unseen hand. 
When about fifty yards off, thinking his companions close 
behind, he shouted, "Look out there !" when off she rushed, 
snorting loudly, in another direction. The doctor usually 
went unarmed before this, but never afterward. 

A peculiar yelping came from one part of the jungle, and 
Charles Livingstone found it to proceed from a troop of 
wild dogs wrangling over the remains of a buffalo which 
they had killed and nearly devoured. The wild dog (Hyce- 
na venatica) has a large head, and jaws of great power; the 
ears are long, the color black and yellow in patches, with a 
white tuft at the top of the tail. They hunt their game in 
packs, and perseveringly follow the animal they first start till 
they bring him down. The Balala of the Kalahari desert 
are said to have formerly tamed them and to have employed 
them to hunt. An intelligent native at Kolobeng remem- 
bered when a boy to have seen a pack of the dogs returning 
from a hunt in charge of their masters, who drove them like 
a herd of goats, and for safety kept them in a pit. A fine 
eland was shot by Dr. Kirk this afternoon, the first we have 
killed. It was in first-rate condition, and remarkably fat; 
but the meat, though so tempting in appearance, severely de- 
ranged all who partook of it heartily, especially those who 
ate of the fat. Natives who live in game countries, and are 
acquainted with the different kinds of wild animals, have a 
prejudice against the fat of the eland, the pallah, the zebra, 
hippopotamus, and pig: they never reject it, however, the 
climate making the desire for all animal food very strong; 



234 FAMILIES FLITTING. Chap. X. 

but they consider that it causes ulcers and leprosy, while the 
fat of the sheep and of oxen never produces any bad effects, 
unless the animal is diseased. 

We frequently meet families flitting from one place to 
another, marching, like ourselves, in single file. The father 
and husband at the head, carrying his bow and arrow, bag, 
hatchet, and spear, and little else ; next his son or sons, arm- 
ed also, but carrying loads ; then follow wife and daughters, 
with bulky loads of household gear on their heads. They 
meet us without fear, or any of the cringing ways of slaves, 
so common down the river, where the institution has been 
established. When we kill any animal these traveling par- 
ties are made welcome to a good portion of meat. At the 
foot or on the branches of the great wild fig-tree, at the pub- 
lic meeting-place of every village, a collection of the magnifi- 
cent horns of buffaloes and antelopes shows the proud tro- 
phies of the hunter's success in the chase. At these spots 
were some of the most splendid buffalo heads we have ever 
seen: the horns, after making a complete circle, had com- 
menced a second turn. This would be a rich country for a 
horn fancier. 

On the morning of the 9th, after passing four villages, we 
breakfasted at an old friend's, Tombanyama, who lives now 
on the main land, having resigned the reedy island where 
he was first seen to the buffaloes, which used to take his 
crops and show fight to his men. He keeps a large flock of 
tame pigeons, and some fine fat capons, one of which he gave 
us, with a basket of meal. They have plenty of salt in this 
part of the country, obtaining it from the plains in the usual 
way. 

The half-caste partner of Sequasha and a number of his 
men were staying near. The fellow was very much fright- 



Chap. X. CONFLUENCE OF THE KAFUE. 235 

ened when he saw us, and trembled so much when he spoke 
that the Makololo and other natives noticed and remarked 
on it. His fears arose from a sense of guilt, as we said 
nothing to frighten him, and did not allude to the murder 
till a few minutes before starting, when it was remarked that 
Dr. Livingstone having been accredited to the murdered 
chief, it would be his duty to report on it, and that not even 
the Portuguese government would approve of the deed. He 
defended it by saying that they had put in the right man ; 
the other was a usurper. He was evidently greatly relieved 
when we departed. In the afternoon we came to an outly- 
ing hamlet of Kambadzo, whose own village is on an island, 
Nyampungo or Nyangalule, at the confluence of the Kafue. 
The chief was on a visit here, and they had been enjoying a 
regular jollification in honor of his highness. There had 
been much mirth, music, drinking, and dancing. The men, 
and women too, had taken " a wee drap too much," but had 
not passed the complimentary stage. The wife of the head 
man, after looking at us a few moments, called out to the 
others, "Black traders have come before, calling themselves 
Bazungu, or white men, but now, for the first time, have we 
seen the real Bazungu." Kambadzo also soon appeared; 
he was sorry that we had not come before the beer was all 
done, but he was going back to see if it was all really and 
entirely finished, and not one little potful left somewhere. 

This was, of course, mere characteristic politeness, as he 
was perfectly aware that every drop had been swallowed; 
so we proceeded on to the Kafue, or Kafuje, accompanied 
by the most intelligent of his head men. A high ridge, 
just before we reached the confluence, commands a splendid 
view of the two great rivers and the rich country beyond. 
.Behind, on the north and east, is the high mountain range 



236 MOUNTAIN KANGE. Chap. X. 

along whose base we have been traveling ; the whole range 
is covered with trees, which appear even on the prominent 
peaks, Chiarapela, Morindi, and Chiava; at this last the 
chain bends away to the N.W., and we could see the distant 
mountains where the chief Semalembue gained all our hearts 
in 1856. 



Chap. XI. HERD OF HIPPOPOTAMI. 237 



CHAPTER XL 

Semalembue. — Nchomokela. — Mr. Moffat's Mission to Moselekatse heard of. — 
Native Game-law. — Mountains. — Ancient State of the Country. — Neither 
Art nor Power possess the Effect of ancient Miracles. — Jealousy of Strangers 
not African, but Arab. — The Bawe and "Baenda pezi," or " Go-nakeds." 
— Their Hospitality. — Leave Zambesi, and ascend Zungwe to Batoka High- 
lands. — Sebetuane. — A Cairn. — Batoka Men of Peace. — Arboriculturists. — 
Grave-yards. — Muave. — Tsetse Medicine. — Desire for Peace. — Corn exten- 
sively cultivated. — A Poet and Minstrel. — Musical Instruments. — Our naked 
Friend. — Polite Tobacco-smokers. — Bawe never visited by Europeans before. 
— Slave-trade follows our Footsteps. — Attempt by the Governor General of 
Mozambique to shut up Eovuma. — Seabenzo. — Elephant killed. — Numbers 
annually slain. — Meteor. — The Falls visible upward of twenty Miles off. — 
Fever treated and untreated. — Moshobotwane. — Meet Makololo near the 
Falls. 

On the 9 th of July we tried to send Semalembue a pres- 
ent, but the people^ here refused to incur the responsibility 
of carrying it. "We, who have the art of writing, can not 
realize the danger one incurs of being accused of purloining 
a portion of goods sent from one person to another, when the 
carrier can not prove that he delivered all committed to his 
charge. Eumors of a foray having been made, either by 
Makololo or Batoka, as far as the fork of the Kafue, were 
received here by our men with great indignation, as it looked 
as if the marauders were shutting up the country, which they 
had been trying so much to open. Below the junction of 
the rivers, on a shallow sand-bank, lay a large herd of hip- 
popotami, their bodies out of the water, like masses of black 
rock. Kambadzo's island, called Nyangalule, a name which 
occurs again at the mouth of the Zambesi, has many choice 
Motsikiri (Trachdia) trees on it, and four very conspicuous 



238 THE BAWE COUNTEY. Chap. XI. 

stately palms growing out of a single stem. The Kafue re- 
minds us a little of the Shire, flowing between steep banks, 
with fertile land on both sides. It is a smaller river, and has 
less current. Here it seems to come from the west. The 
head man of the village, near which we encamped, brought a 
present of meal, fowls, and sweet potatoes. They have both 
the red and white varieties of this potato. We have, on sev- 
eral occasions during this journey, felt the want of vegeta- 
bles, in a disagreeable craving which our diet of meat and 
native meal could not satisfy. It became worse and worse 
till we got a meal of potatoes, which allayed it at once. A 
great scarcity of vegetables prevails in these parts of Africa. 
The natives collect several kinds of wild plants in the woods, 
which they use, no doubt, for the purpose of driving off crav- 
ings similar to those we experienced. 

Owing to the strength of the wind and the cranky state of 
the canoes, it was late in the afternoon of the 11th before our 
party was ferried over the Kafue. After crossing we were 
in the Bawe country. Fishhooks here, of native workman- 
ship, were observed to have barbs like the European hooks : 
elsewhere the point of the hook is merely bent in toward the 
shank, to have the same effect in keeping on the fish as the 
barb. "We slept near a village a short distance above the 
ford. The people here are of Batoka origin, the same as 
many of our men, and call themselves Batonga (independ- 
ents) or Balengi, and their language only differs slightly from 
that of the Bakoa, who live between the two rivers Kafue 
and Loangwa. The paramount chief of the district lives to 
the west of this place, and is called Nchomokela — an heredit- 
ary title : the family burying-place is on a small hill near this 
village. The women salute us by clapping their hands and 
lullilooing as we enter and leave a village, and the men, as 



Chap. XL NATIVE GAME-LAW. 239 

they think, respectfully clap their hands on their hips. Im- 
mense crops of mapira (liolcus sorghum) are raised ; one spe- 
cies of it forms a natural bend on the seed-stalk, so that the 
massive ear hangs down. The grain was heaped up on 
wooden stages, and so was a variety of other products. The 
men are skillful hunters, and kill elephants and buffaloes with 
long heavy spears. We halted a few minutes on the morn- 
ing of the 12th of July opposite the narrow island of Sikakoa, 
which has a village on its lower end. We were here told 
that Moselekatse's chief town is a month's distance from this 
place. They had heard, moreover, that the English had come 
to Moselekatse, and told him it was wrong to kill men ; and 
he had replied that he was born to kill people, but would 
drop the habit; and, since the English came, he had sent out 
his men, not to kill as of yore, but to collect tribute of cloth 
and ivory. This report referred to the arrival of the Kev.R 
Moffat, of Kuruman, who, we afterward found, had establish- 
ed a mission. The statement is interesting as showing that, 
though imperfectly expressed, the purport of the missiona- 
ries' teaching had traveled, in a short time, over 300 miles, 
and we know not how far the knowledge of the English 
operations on the Coast spread inland. 

When abreast of the high wooded island Kalabi we came 
in contact with one of the game-laws of the country, which 
has come down from the most ancient times. An old buffalo 
crossed the path a few yards in front of us ; our guide threw 
his small spear at his hip, and it was going off scarcely hurt, 
when three rifle balls knocked it over. "It is mine," said 
the guide. He had wounded it first, and the established na- 
tive game-law is that the animal belongs to the man who 
first draws blood ; the two legs on one side, by the same law, 
belonged to us for killing it. This beast was very old, blind 



240 ANCIENT STATE OF THE COUNTKY. Chap. XL 

of one eye, and scabby ; the horns, mere stumps, not a foot 
long, must have atrophied when by age he lost the strength 
distinctive of his sex ; some eighteen or twenty inches of 
horn could not well be worn down by mere rubbing against 
the trees. We saw many buffaloes next day standing quiet- 
ly amid a thick thorn-jungle through which we were passing. 
They often stood until we were within fifty or a hundred 
yards of them. 

We had always mountains before us in the distance, and 
sometimes passed through hills that come close to or inter- 
sect the river. This is the case with those called Moio. 
They are generally of igneous or metamorphic • rocks, clay- 
slate, or trap, with porcellanite and zeolite ; the principal 
rock in the central part of the country, where no syenite or 
gneiss had been upheaved, seems to be a gray coarse sand- 
stone, known to us by the name of Tette sandstone. Large 
masses of it still lie horizontally or only slightly inclined. 
When much disturbed, it has been tilted up by the eruption 
of igneous rocks, and near the point of contact it has either 
been hardened or melted, and the coal which elsewhere still 
lies under the undisturbed stratum is crystallized or entirely 
burned. The igneous rocks often form dikes, as that called 
Nakabele, which stretches like a dam across the western en- 
trance to the Kariba gorge. In the vicinity of the erupted 
rocks we usually meet soft calcareous tufa, as if, after the ig- 
neous action, many hot fountains flowing had deposited lime 
from their water. 

Previous, however, to this period, of eruption and upheav- 
el,it is probable that the sandstone formed the bed of prodig- 
ious inland seas, along the low shores of which the plants of 
the coal flourished, succeeded, as the land was gradually ele- 
vated, by the trees we now find silicified on the surface; 



Chap. XL MOLOI, A GENEROUS CHIEF. 241 

these may perhaps have been submerged, as the land again 
sank under some igneous agency, and became subjected to 
the action of water at a high temperature, holding silica in 
solution. However that may have been, it is certain that a 
coal-field of unknown extent exists, for coal is found crop- 
ping out near to the lava or basalt, which is the principal 
rock of the Victoria Falls district, and, with the " faults" al- 
luded to, it extends to the east of Tette. Then, again, we 
saw it in the Rovuma, with the same characteristic of fossil 
wood lying on the gray sandstone. With abundance of fine 
iron ore, the existence of this prodigious coal-field leads to 
the belief that an important future is in store for Africa. 

On the 14th of July we left the river at the mountain 
range, which, lying northeast and southwest across the river, 
forms the Kariba gorge. Near the upper end of the Kariba 
Rapids, the stream Sanyati enters from the south, and is re- 
ported to have Moselekatse's principal cattle -posts at its 
sources; our route went round the north end of the mount- 
ains, and we encamped beside the village of the generous 
chief Moloi, who brought us three immense baskets of fine 
mapira meal, ten fowls, and two pots of beer. On receiving 
a present in return, he rose, and, with a few dancing gestures, 
said or sang " Motota, Motota, Motota," which our men trans- 
lated into "thanks." He had visited Moselekatse a few 
months before our arrival, and saw the English missionaries 
living in their wagons. " They told Moselekatse," said he, 
" they were of his family, or friends, and would plow the 
land and live at their own expense;" and he had replied, 
"The land is before you, and I shall come and see you plow." 
This again was substantially what took place when Mr. Mof- 
fat introduced the missionaries to his old friend, and shows 
still farther that the notion of losing their country by admit- 

Q 



242 JEALOUSY NOT MAINLY AFRICAN. Chap. XI. 

ting foreigners does not come as the first idea to the native 
mind. One might imagine that, as mechanical powers are 
unknown to the heathen, the almost magic operations of ma- 
chinery, the discoveries of modern science and art, or the 
presence of the prodigious force which, for instance, is asso- 
ciated with the sight of a man-of-war, would have the effect 
which miracles once had of arresting the attention and in- 
spiring awe. But, though we have heard the natives ex- 
claim in admiration at the sight of even small illustrations 
of what science enables us to do, " Ye are gods, and not 
men," the heart is unaffected. In attempting their moral 
elevation, it is always more conducive to the end desired that 
the teacher should come unaccompanied by any power to 
cause either jealousy or fear. The heathen, who have not 
become aware of the greed and hate which too often charac- 
terize the advancing tide of emigration, listen with most at- 
tention to the message of Divine love when delivered by 
men who evidently possess the same human sympathies with 
themselves. A chief is rather envied his good fortune in 
first securing foreigners in his town. Jealousy of strangers 
belongs more to the Arab than to the African character; and 
if the women are let alone by the traveler, no danger need 
be apprehended from any save the slave-trading tribes, and 
not often even from them. 

We saw large flocks of the beautiful Numidian cranes ; 
Guinea-fowls were still numerous, but rather shyer, as the 
natives here shoot many with arrows, and kill them by skill- 
fully throwing their clubs. The Mambo, the name here for 
chief, of the island Mochue sent his brother and principal 
men after us to present a gift, and to " hear the words which 
were to cause the land to rest." We apologized for passing 
without calling by stating that strangers could not know who 



Chap. XL THE " BAENDA PEZI, " OR " GO-NAKEDS." 243 

was who. He proposed sending a deputation with us to Se- 
keletu, in order to renew the friendly intercourse of former 
years, which of late had been broken by marauding and war; 
but the doctor said he did not know whether Sekeletu was 
governing wisely, or whether he was hearkening to the 
counsels of the old warriors, who wished him to follow in 
the footsteps of his warlike father, Sebetuane. As we were 
spending the evening opposite Mochue, some men came with 
a marimba and accompaniments of buffalo-horns beaten with 
sticks ; but our men, knowing that we soon tired of their mo- 
notonous tunes and ungainly dancing, ordered them away. 
On the islands and on the left bank of the Zambesi, all the 
way from the Eiver Kafue, there is a large population ; the 
right bank is equally fertile, but depopulated, because Mose- 
lekatse does not allow any one to live there who might raise 
an alarm when he sends out marauders beyond. From Mo- 
ld's village onward, the people, though Batoka, are called 
Bawe and Ba Selea. Much salt is made on the Eivulet Lo- 
sito, and sold in large quantities, and very cheap. 

We passed through a fertile country, .covered with open 
forest, accompanied by the friendly Bawe. They are very 
hospitable; many of them were named, among themselves, 
"the Baenda pezi," or "Go-nakeds," their only clothing be- 
ing a coat of red ochre. Occasionally stopping at their vil- 
lages, we were duly lullilooed, and regaled with sweet new- 
made beer, which, being yet unfermented, was not intoxica- 
ting. It is in this state called Liting or Makonde. Some of 
the men carry large shields of buffalo-hide, and all are well 
supplied with heavy spears. The vicinity of the villages is 
usually cleared and cultivated in large patches ; but nowhere 
can the country be said to be stocked with people. At every 
village stands were erected, and piles of the native corn, still 



244: THE BAWE VERY HOSPITABLE. Chap. XI. 

unthrashed, placed upon them ; some had been beaten out, 
put into oblong parcels made of grass, and stacked in wooden 
frames. 

We crossed several rivulets in our course, as the Mandora, 
the Lofla, the Manzaia (with brackish water), the Rimbe, the 
Chibue, the Chezia, the Chilola (containing fragments of coal), 
which did little more than mark our progress. The island 
and rapid of Nakansalo, of which we had formerly heard, were 
of no importance, the rapid being but half a mile long, and 
only on one side of the island. The island Kaluzi marks one 
of the numerous places where astronomical observations were 
made ; Mozia, a station where a volunteer poet left us ; the 
island Mochenya, and Mpande Island, at the mouth of the 
Zunffwe rivulet, where we left the Zambesi. 

When favored with the hospitality and company of the 
" Go-nakeds," we tried to discover if nudity were the badge 
of a particular order among the Bawe, but they could only 
refer to custom. Some among them had always liked it for 
no reason in particular : shame seemed to lie dormant, and 
the sense could not be aroused by our laughing and joking 
them on their appearance. They evidently felt no less de- 
cent than we did with our clothes on ; but, whatever may be 
said in favor of nude statues, it struck us that man, in a state 
of nature, is a most ungainly animal. Could we see a number 
of the degraded of our own lower classes in like guise, it is 
probable that, without the black color which acts somehow as 
a dress, they would look worse still. 

In domestic contentions the Bawe are careful not to kill 
each other ; but, when one village goes to war with another, 
they are not so particular. The victorious party are said to 
quarter one of the bodies of the enemies they may have killed, 
and to perform certain ceremonies over the fragments. The 



Chap. XI. LEAVE THE ZAMBESI. 245 

vanquished call upon their conquerors to give them a portion 
also ; and, when this request is complied with, they too perform 
the same ceremonies, and lament over their dead comrade, 
after which the late combatants may visit each other in peace. 
Sometimes the head of the slain is taken and buried in an ant- 
hill till all the flesh is gone, and the lower jaw is then worn as 
a trophy by the slayer ; but this we never saw, and the fore- 
going information was obtained only through an interpreter. 
We left the Zambesi at the mouth of the Zungwe, or Mo- 
zama, or Dela rivulet, up which we proceeded, first in a west- 
erly and then in a northwesterly direction. The Zungwe at 
this time had no water in its sandy channel for the first eight 
or ten miles. Willows, however, grow on the banks, and wa- 
ter soon began to appear in the hollows ; and a few miles far- 
ther up it was a fine flowing stream deliciously cold. As in 
many other streams from Chicova to near Sinamane, shale 
and coal crop out in the bank ; and here the large roots of 
stigmaria or its allied plants were found. We followed the 
course of the Zungwe to the foot of the Batoka highlands, 
up whose steep and rugged sides of red and white quartz we 
climbed till we attained an altitude of upward of 3000 feet. 
Here, on the cool and bracing heights, the exhilaration of 
mind and body was delightful, as we looked back at the hol- 
low beneath covered with a hot sultry glare, not unpleasant 
now that we were in the mild radiance above. We had a 
noble view of the great valley in which the Zambesi flows. 
The cultivated portions are so small in comparison to the rest 
of the landscape that the valley appears nearly all forest, with 
a few grassy glades. We spent the night of the 28th of July 
high above the level of the sea, by the Eivulet Tyotyo, near 
Tabacheu or Chirebuechina, names both signifying white 
mountain ; in the morning hoar-frost covered the ground, and 



246 DESERTED BATOKA VILLAGES. Chap. XI. 

thin ice was on the pools. Skirting the southern flank of Ta- 
bacheu, we soon passed from the hills on to the portion of the 
vast table-land called Mataba, and, looking back, saw all the 
way across the Zambesi valley to the lofty ridge some thirty 
miles off, which, coming from the Mashona, a country in the 
S.E., runs to the N.W. to join the ridge at the angle of which 
are the Yictoria Falls, and then bends far to the K.E. from 
the same point. Only a few years since, these extensive high- 
lands were peopled by the Batoka ; numerous herds of cattle 
furnished abundance of milk, and the rich soil amply repaid 
the labor of the husbandman ; now large herds of buffaloes, 
zebras, and antelopes fatten on the excellent pasture ; and on 
that land which formerly supported multitudes, not a man is 
to be seen. In traveling from Monday morning till late on 
Saturday afternoon, all the way from Tabacheu to Moachem- 
ba, which is only twenty-one miles of latitude from the Yicto- 
ria Falls, and constantly passing the ruined sites of utterly de- 
serted Batoka villages, we did not fall in with a single person. 
The Batoka were driven out of their noble country by the 
invasions of Moselekatse and Sebetuane. Several tribes of 
Bechuana and Basutu, fleeing from the Zulu or Matebele chief 
Moselekatse, reached the Zambesi above the Falls. Coming 
from a land without rivers, none of them knew how to swim ; 
and one tribe, called the Bamangwato, wishing to cross the 
Zambesi, was ferried over, men and women separately, to dif- 
ferent islands, by one of the Batoka chiefs ; the men were then 
left to starve, and the women appropriated by the ferryman 
and his people. Sekomi, the present chief of the Bamangwa- 
to, then an infant in his mother's arms, was enabled, through 
the kindness of a private Batoka, to escape. This act seems 
to have made an indelible impression on Sekomi's heart ; for, 
though otherwise callous, he still never fails to inquire after 
the welfare of his benefactor. 



Chap. XL THE BATOKA MEN OF PEACE. 247 

Sebetuane, with his wonted ability, outwitted the treacher- 
ous Batoka by insisting in the politest manner on their chief 
remaining at his own side until the people and cattle were all 
carried safe across ; the chief was then handsomely rewarded 
both with cattle and brass rings off Sebetuane's own wives. 
No sooner were the Makololo, then called Basuto, safely over, 
than they were confronted by the whole Batoka nation ; and 
to this day the Makololo point with pride to the spot on the 
Lekone, near to which they were encamped, where Sebetu- 
ane, with a mere handful of warriors in comparison to the vast 
horde that surrounded him, stood waiting the onslaught, the 
warriors in one small body, the women and children guard- 
ing the cattle behind them. The Batoka, of course, melted 
away before those who had been made veterans by years of 
continual fighting, and Sebetuane always justified his subse- 
quent conquests in that country by alleging that the Batoka 
had come out to fight with a man fleeing for his life, who had 
never done them any wrong. They seem never to have been 
a warlike race ; passing through their country, we once ob- 
served a large stone cairn, and our guide favored us with the 
following account of it: "Once upon a time, our forefathers 
were going to fight another tribe, and here they halted and 
sat down. After a long consultation, they came to the unan- 
imous conclusion that, instead of proceeding to fight and kill 
their neighbors, and perhaps be killed themselves, it would be 
more like men to raise this heap of stones as their protest 
against the wrong the other tribe had done them, which hav- 
ing accomplished, they returned quietly home." Such men 
of peace could not stand before the Makololo, nor, of course, 
the more warlike Matebele, who, coming afterward, drove 
even their conquerors, the Makololo, out of the country. Se- 
betuane, however, profiting by the tactics which he had learn- 



248 ARBORICULTURISTS. Chap. XI. 

ed of the Batoka, inveigled a large body of this new enemy 
on to another island, and after due starvation there overcame 
the whole. A much greater army of " Moselekatse's own" 
followed with canoes, but were now baffled by Sebetuane's 
placing all his people and cattle on an island, and so guard- 
ing it that none could approach. Dispirited, famished, borne 
down by fever, they returned to the Falls, and all except five 
were cut off. 

But, though the Batoka appear never to have had much in- 
clination to fight with men, they are decidedly brave hunters 
of buffaloes and elephants. They go fearlessly close up to 
these formidable animals, and kill them with large spears. 
The Banyai, who have long bullied all Portuguese traders, 
were amazed at the daring and bravery of the Batoka in com- 
ing at once to close quarters with the elephant ; and Chisaka, 
a Portuguese rebel, having formerly induced a body of this 
tribe to settle with him, ravaged all the Portuguese villas 
around Tette. They bear the nape of Basimilongwe, and 
some of our men found relations among them. Sininyane 
and Matenga also, two of our party, were once inveigled into 
a Portuguese expedition against Mariano by the assertion that 
the doctor had arrived and had sent for them to come down 
to Senna, On finding that they were entrapped to fight, they 
left, after seeing an officer with a large number of Tette slaves 
killed. 

The Batoka had attained somewhat civilized ideas in plant- 
ing and protecting various fruit and oil-seed yielding trees of 
the country. ]STo other tribe either plants or abstains from 
cutting down fruit-trees, but here we saw some which had 
been planted in regular rows, and the trunks of which were 
quite two feet in diameter. The grand old Mosibe, a tree 
yielding a bean with a thin red pellicle, said to be very fat- 



Chap. XL GRAVE-YARDS. 249 

tening, had probably seen two hundred summers. Dr. Kirk 
found that the Mosibe is peculiar, in being allied to a species 
met with only in the West Indies. The Motsikiri, sometimes 
called Mafuta, yields a< hard fat, and an oil which is exported 
from Inhambane. It is said that two ancient Batoka travel- 
ers went down as far as the Loangwa, and finding the Macaa- 
tree {jujube or zisyphus) in fruit, carried the seed all the way 
back to the great Falls, in order to plant them. Two of these 
trees are still to be seen there, the only specimens of the kind 
in that region. 

The Batoka had made a near approach to the custom of 
more refined nations, and had permanent grave-yards, either 
on the sides of hills, thus rendered sacred, or under large old 
shady trees ; they reverence the tombs of their ancestors, and 
plant the largest elephants' tusks as monuments at the head 
of the grave, or entirely inclose it with the choicest ivory. 
Some of the other tribes throw the dead body into the river 
to be devoured by crocodiles, or, sewing it up in a mat, place 
it on the branch of a Baobab, or cast it in some lonely gloomy 
spot, surrounded by dense tropical vegetation, where it af- 
fords a meal to the foul hyenas ; but the Batoka reverently 
bury their dead, and regard the spot henceforth as sacred. 
The ordeal by the poison of the muave is resorted to by the 
Batoka as well as by the other tribes ; but a cock is often 
made to stand proxy for the supposed witch. Near the con- 
fluence of the Kafue, the Mambo, or chief, with some of his 
head men, came to our sleeping-place with a present; their 
foreheads were smeared with white flour, and an unusual se- 
riousness marked their demeanor. Shortly before our arrival 
they had been accused of witchcraft : conscious of innocence, 
they accepted the ordeal, and undertook to drink the poison- 
ed muave. Tor this purpose they made a journey to the sa- 






250 ORDEAL OF MUAVE. Chap. XI. 

cred hill of JSTchomokela, on which repose the bodies of their 
ancestors ; and, after a solemn appeal to the unseen spirits to 
attest the innocence of their children, they swallowed the mu- 
ave, vomited, and were therefore declared not guilty. It is 
evident that they believe that the soul has a continued ex- 
istence, and that the spirits of the departed know what those 
they have left behind them are doing, and are pleased or not, 
according as their deeds are good or evil : this belief is uni- 
versal. The owner of a large canoe refused to sell it because 
it belonged to the spirit of his father, who helped him when 
he killed the hippopotamus. Another, when the bargain for 
his canoe was nearly completed, seeing a large serpent on a 
branch of the tree overhead, refused to complete the sale, al- 
leging that this was the spirit of his father come to protest 
against it. 

Some of the Batoka chiefs must have been men of consid- 
erable enterprise ; the land of one, in the western part of this 
country, was protected by the Zambesi on the S., and on the 
1ST. and E. lay an impassable reedy marsh, filled with water all 
the year round, leaving only his western border open to in- 
vasion ; he conceived the idea of digging a broad and deep 
canal, nearly a mile in length, from the reedy marsh to the 
Zambesi, and, having actually carried the scheme into execu- 
tion, he formed a large island, on which his cattle grazed in 
safety, and his corn ripened from year to year secure from all 
marauders. 

Another chief, who died a number of years ago, believed 
that he had discovered a remedy for tsetse-bitten cattle ; his 
son Moyara showed us a plant, which was new to our bota- 
nist, and likewise told us how the medicine was prepared ; the 
bark of the root, and, what might please our homoeopathic 
friends, a dozen of the tsetse, are dried, and ground together 



Chap. XL TSETSE MEDICINE. 251 

into a fine powder. This mixture is administered internally ; 
and the cattle are fumigated by burning under them the rest 
of the plant collected. The treatment must be continued for 
weeks whenever the symptoms of poison appear. This med- 
icine, he frankly admitted, would not cure all the bitten cat- 
tle. " For," said he, " cattle, and men too, die in spite of med- 
icine ; but should a herd by accident stray into a tsetse dis- 
trict and be bitten, by this medicine of my father, Kampa- 
kampa, some of them could be saved, while without it all 
would inevitably die." He stipulated that we were not to 
show the medicine to other people, and if ever we needed it 
in this region we must employ him ; but if we were far off 
we might make it ourselves ; and when we saw it cure the 
cattle, think of him, and send him a present. 

Our men made it known every where that we wished the 
tribes to live in peace, and would use our influence to induce 
Sekeletu to prevent the Batoka of Moshobotwane and the 
Makololo under-chiefs making forays into their country : they 
had already suffered severely, and their remonstrances with 
their countryman, Moshobotwane, evoked only the answer, 
"The Makololo have given me a spear; why should I not 
use it?" He indeed it was who, being remarkably swift of 
foot, first guided the Makololo in their conquest of the coun- 
try. In the character of peace-makers, therefore, we experi- 
enced abundant hospitality ; and from the Kafue to the Falls, 
none of our party were allowed to suffer hunger. The na- 
tives sent to our sleeping-places generous presents of the fin- 
est white meal, and fat capons to give it a relish, great pots 
of beer to comfort our hearts, together with pumpkins, beans, 
and tobacco, so that we " should sleep neither hungry nor 
thirsty." 

In traveling from the Kafue to the Zungwe we frequently 



252 CORN EXTENSIVELY GROWN. Chap. XL 

passed several villages in the course of a day's march. In 
the evening came deputies from the villages at which we 
could not stay to sleep with liberal presents of food. It 
would have pained them to have allowed strangers to pass 
without partaking of their hospitality ; repeatedly were we 
hailed from huts, and asked to wait a moment and drink a lit- 
tle of the beer, which was brought with alacrity. Our march 
resembled a triumphal procession. We entered and left ev- 
ery village amid the cheers of its inhabitants ; the men clap- 
ping their hands, and the women lullilooing, with the shrill 
call, "Let us sleep," or "Peace." Passing through a hamlet 
one day, our guide called to the people, " Why do you not 
clap your hands and salute when you see men who are wish- 
ing to bring peace to the land?" When we halted for the 
night it was no uncommon thing for the people to prepare 
our camp entirely of their own accord ; some, with hoes, 
quickly smoothed the ground for our beds, others brought 
dried grass and spread it carefully over the spot ; some, with 
their small axes, speedily made a bush fence to shield us from 
the wind ; and if, as occasionally happened, the water was a 
little distance off, others hastened and brought it, with fire- 
wood to cook our food with. They are an industrious peo- 
ple, and very fond of agriculture. For hours together we 
marched through unbroken fields of mapira, or native corn, 
of a great width ; but one can give no idea of the extent of 
land under the hoe as compared with any European country. 
The extent of surface is so great that the largest fields under 
culture, when viewed on a wide landscape, dwindle to mere 
spots. When taken in connection with the wants of the peo- 
ple, the cultivation, on the whole, is most creditable to their 
industry. They erect numerous granaries, which give their 
villages the appearance of being large ; and, when the water 



Chap. XI. SOBRIETY OF THE BATOKA. 253 

of the Zambesi has subsided, they place large quantities of 
grain, tied up in bundles of grass, and well plastered over 
with clay, on low sand islands for protection from the attacks 
of marauding mice and men. Owing to the ravages of the 
weevil, the native corn can hardly be preserved until the fol- 
lowing crop comes in. However largely they may cultivate, 
and however abundant the harvest, it must all be consumed 
in a year. This may account for their making so much of it 
into beer. The beer these Batoka or Bawe brew is not the 
sour and intoxicating boala or pombe found among some oth- 
er tribes, but sweet and highly nutritive, with only a slight 
degree of acidity, sufficient to render it a pleasant drink. The 
people were all plump and in good condition ; and we never 
saw a single instance of intoxication among them, though all 
drank abundance of this liting, or sweet beer. Both men and 
boys were eager to work for very small pay. Our men could 
hire any number of them to carry their burdens for a few 
beads a day. Our miserly and dirty ex-cook had an old pair 
of trowsers that some one had given to him ; after he had 
long worn them himself, with one of the sorely-decayed legs 
he hired a man to carry his heavy load a whole day ; a sec- 
ond man carried it the next day for the other leg ; and what 
remained of the old garment, without the buttons, procured 
the labor of another man for the third day. 

Men of remarkable ability have risen up among the Afri- 
cans from time to time, as among other portions of the hu- 
man family. Some have attracted the attention and excited* 
the admiration of large districts by their wisdom. Others, 
apparently by the powers of ventriloquism, or by peculiar 
dexterity in throwing the spear or shooting with the bow, 
have been the wonder of their generation ; but the total ab- 
sence of literature leads to the loss of all former experience, 



254 A POET AND MINSTREL. Chap. XL 

and the wisdom of the wise has not been handed down. They 
have had their minstrels too, but mere tradition preserves not 
their effusions. One of these, and apparently a genuine poet, 
attached himself to our party for several days, and, whenever 
we halted, sang our praises to the villagers in smooth and har- 
monious numbers. It was a sort of blank verse, and each 
line consisted of five syllables. The song was short when it 
first began, but each day he picked up more information about 
us, and added to the poem until our praises became an ode of 
respectable length. When distance from home compelled his 
return, he expressed his regret at leaving us, and was, of 
course, paid for his useful and pleasant flatteries. Another, 
though a less gifted son of song, belonged to the Batoka of 
our own party. Every evening, while the others were cook- 
ing, talking, or sleeping, he rehearsed his songs, containing a 
history of every thing he had seen in the land of the white 
men, and on the way back. In composing, extempore, any 
new piece, he was never at a loss ; for if the right word did 
not come, he halted not, but eked out the measure with a pe- 
culiar musical sound meaning nothing at all. He accompa- 
nied his recitations on the sansa, an instrument figured in the 
woodcut (c), the nine iron keys of which are played with the 
thumbs, while the fingers pass behind to hold it. The hollow 
end and ornaments face the breast of the player. Persons of 
a musical turn, if too poor to buy a sansa, may be seen play- 
ing vigorously on an instrument made with a number of thick 
oorn-stalks sewn together, as a sansa frame, and keys of split 
bamboo, which, though making but little sound, seems to 
soothe the player himself. When the instrument is played 
with a calabash (a) as a sounding-board, it emits a greater vol- 
ume of sound. Pieces of shells and tin are added to make a 
jingling accompaniment, and the calabash (b) is also orna- 
mented. 



Chap. XI. 



MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. 



255 




(a) Calabash sounding-board. (b) Calabash ornamented with figures. (c) Sansa. 



In musing over the peculiar habit indicated in the name 
"Baenda pezi" (Gro-nakeds), we conjectured that it might be 
an order similar to that of Freemasons ; but no secret society 
can be found among the native Africans. A sort of broth- 
erhood, called by the Portuguese " Empacasseiros," exists in 
Angola, but it only enjoins community of right to food in 
each other's hut ; and the qualification for admission is abil- 
ity to shoot the empacasso (buffalo or gnu). This is very 
much the same thing as that which distinguishes the bands 
into which the young Makololo are formed on circumcision. 
They thenceforward consider each other as in a state of per- 
fect equality, and bound to keep up the discipline of their 
troop, and, in case of cowardice, to inflict punishment. No 
good, as far as we could learn, would result to any one in 
this country from his knowledge of Freemasonry. A noble 
specimen of the Baenda pezi order once visited us and gained 
our esteem, though the full dress in which he stood consisted 
only of a tobacco - pipe, with a stem two feet long wound 
round with polished iron. He brought a liberal present. 



256 UR NAKED FRIEND. Chap. XI. 

" Grod made him naked," lie said, " and he had therefore nev- 
er worn any sort of clothing." This gentleman's philosophy 
is very much like that of some dirty people we have known, 
who justified their want of fastidiousness by saying "fingers 
were made before forks." Early next morning we had an- 
other interview with our naked friend, accompanied this time 
by his wife and daughter, bearing two large pots of beer, with 
which he wished us to refresh ourselves before starting. Both 
the women, as comely and modest-looking as any we have 
seen in Africa, were well clothed, and adorned, as indeed all 
their women are. Some wear tin ear-rings all round the ear, 
and as many as nine often in each ear. The men rub their 
bodies with red ochre. Some plait a fillet two inches wide 
of the inner bark of trees, and shave the hair off the lower 
part of the head, an inch above the ears being bare ; the hair 
on the upper part having been well smeared with red ochre 
in oil, the fillet is bound on to it, and gives the head the ap- 
pearance of having on a neat forage-cap. Some strings of 
coarse beads, and a little polished iron-wire round the arms, 
the never-failing pipe, and a small pair of iron tongs to lift 
the lighted coal, constitute the entire clothing of the most 
dandified young men of the Baenda pezi. All their other 
faculties seem fairly developed; but, as neither ridicule nor 
joking could awaken the sense of shame, it is probable that 
clothing alone would arouse the dormant feeling. Girls of 
eight or ten years, nearly naked, were clothed and taken into 
the Mission-house at Kolobeng as nurses to the children. In 
a fortnight after, they hastily covered their bosoms, even if 
one only passed through the sitting-room in which they slept. 
Among Zulus, the smaller the covering, the more intense the 
shame on accidental exposure. 

Large quantities of tobacco are raised on the lower bank 



Chap. XL POLITE TOBACCO-SMOKERS. 257 

of the Zambesi during the winter months, and the people are 
perhaps the most inveterate smokers in the world. The pipe 
is seldom out of their mouths, and they are as polite smokers 
as any ever met with in a railway carriage. When they 
came with a present, although we were in their own country, 
they asked before lighting their pipes if we had any objec- 
tion to their smoking beside us, which, of course, we never 
had. They think that they have invented an improved meth- 
od of smoking ; a description of it may interest those who 
are fond of the weed at home. They take a whiff, puff out 
the grosser smoke, then, by a sudden inhalation, contrive to 
catch and swallow, as they say, the real essence, the very spir- 
it of the tobacco, which in the ordinary way is entirely lost. 
The Batoka tobacco is famed in the country for its strength, 
and it certainly is both very strong and very cheap : a few 
strings of beads will purchase enough to last any reasonable 
man for six months. It caused headache in the only smoker 
of our party, from its strength ; but this quality makes the 
natives come great distances to buy it. 

The people above Kariba had never been visited before by 
foreigners ; the chief of Koba, on being asked if any tradition 
existed of strangers having formerly come into the country, 
replied, "Not at all; our fathers all died without telling us 
that they had seen men like you. To-day I am exalted in 
seeing what they never saw." Others, in reference to old 
men being in the habit of telling wonderful tales, said, " We 
are the true ancients ; we have seen stranger things than any 
of our ancestors in seeing you." The only tradition of for- 
eigners coming into the country refers to the ascent of Sinio- 
ens as far as the Sanyati, at the entrance to the Kariba gorge. 
According to the testimony of the people of the country and 
the statement of the companion of this robber to us, it was a 

E 



258 SLAVE-TRADE FOLLOWS US. Chap. XI. 

regular plundering foray similar to that of Sequasha. Like 
the Boers and others we have known, this man, who is still 
alive at Tette, eager to make the most of his conquest, repre- 
sented the people attacked to have been Matebele, and on be- 
ing told that they were Bawe, a tribe of Batoka, he answered, 
" Well, we thought them to be Matebele (Landeens), because 
they were naked." After accumulating large quantities of 
ivory and many slaves by the aid of his followers' fire-arms, 
which the people had never before encountered, Simoens lost 
all the booty and his life by a combination of the chiefs un- 
der Chisaka at the Eivulet Zingesi, near to Mpende. 

After we had passed up, however, a party of slaves, belong- 
ing to the two native Portuguese who assassinated the chief 
Mpangwe, and took possession of his lands at Zumbo, follow- 
ed on our footsteps, and, representing themselves to be our 
"children," bought great quantities of ivory from the Bawe 
for a few coarse beads a tusk. They also purchased ten large 
new canoes to carry it at the rate of six strings of red or 
white beads, or two fathoms of gray calico, for each canoe, 
and, at the same cheap rate, a number of good-looking girls. 

We had long ere this become thoroughly convinced that 
the government of Lisbon had been guilty, possibly uninten- 
tionally, of double dealing. Public instructions, as already 
stated, had been sent from Portugal to all the officials to ren- 
der us every assistance in their power, but these were to be 
understood with considerable reservation. From what we ob- 
served, it was clear that, with the public orders to the officials 
to aid us, private instructions had come to thwart us. It is 
possible that these private instructions meant only that we 
were to be watched ; but where nearly every one, from gov- 
ernor to convict soldier, is an eager slave-dealer, such orders 
could only mean, " Keep a sharp look-out that your slave- 



Chap. XI. PORTUGUESE OPPOSITION. 259 

trade follows as near their heels as possible." We were now 
so fully convinced that, in opening the country through 
which no Portuguese durst previously pass, we were made 
the unwilling instruments of extending the slave-trade, that, 
had we not been under obligations to return with the Mako- 
lolo to their own country, we should have left the Zambesi 
and gone to the Eovuma, or to some other inlet to the inte- 
rior. It was with bitter sorrow that we saw the good we 
would have done turned to evil. 

We afterward learned that no sooner was it proposed that 
we should go to the Rovuma, than the Governor General 
d' Almeida hastened up to Zanzibar, and tried to induce the 
sultan to agree to that river being made the boundary be- 
tween him and the Portuguese. This movement, the effect 
of instructions drawn up after information had been obtained 
from our letters being read at the meetings of the Geograph- 
ical Society, London, was happily frustrated by Colonel Rig- 
by, and the governor general had to be content with Cape 
Delgado as the extreme limit of Portuguese claims north- 
ward. 

On the Batoka highlands, the invigorating breezes disposed 
us to listen with pleasure to the singing of birds. It might 
be owing to the greater cold, but the variety of notes in their 
warblings seemed greater than with African birds in general. 
A pretty little black bird, with white shoulders, probably a 
weaver, but not seen elsewhere, sat on the topmost twigs of 
the huge trees, pouring forth its melody as if glad, among 
the deserted villages, once more to see the face of man. It 
flew from tree to tree, and sang on the wing, though not soar- 
ing like the lark. It bears frost, and to the bird-fancier or 
Acclimatization Society might be an interesting addition to 
their birds of song. It is not the honey-guide alone that is 



260 ELEPHANT KILLED. Chap. XL 

attached to man. The whydah-bird and water-wagtail are 
held sacred by the natives of different parts, and consequent- 
ly come without fear close to human kind. Were our small 
birds not so much persecuted by small boys, their attachment 
would be more apparent, even in England. 

Seabenzo, the chief whom we found on the Tyotyo Eivu- 
let, had accompanied us some distance over the undulating 
highland plains ; and as he and our own men needed meat, 
we killed an elephant. This, unless one really needs the 
meat, or is eager for the ivory, can scarcely be looked back 
to without regret. These noble beasts, capable of being so 
useful to man in the domestic state, are, we fear, destined, at 
no distant date, to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet, 
in the excitement, all this and more was at once forgotten, 
and we joined in the assault as eagerly as those who think 
only of the fat and savory flesh. 

The writings of Harris and Gordon dimming contain such 
full and nauseating details of indiscriminate slaughter of the 
wild animals, that one wonders to see almost every African 
book since besmeared with feeble imitations of these great 
hunters' tales. Some tell of escapes from situations which, 
from our knowledge of the nature of the animals, it requires 
a painful stretch of charity to believe ever existed, even in 
dreams ; and others of deeds which lead one to conclude that 
the proportion of "born butchers" in the population is as 
great as of public-house keepers to the people in Glasgow. 

The amount of ivory taken to the marts of the world 
shows that about 30,000 elephants are annually slain. * It is 

* After a lecture by Professor Owen, E.R.S., at the Society of Arts, London, 
17th Dec, 1856, on the "Ivory and Teeth of Commerce," Mr. P. L. Simmonds 
gave some trade statistics from which it was calculated that upward of 30,000 
elephants annually perished. In one cargo of 1276 elephants' tusks, weighing 
in all 20,953 lbs., the average weight was 16£ lbs. In another cargo 556 ele- 



Chap. XI. NUMBERS ANNUALLY SLAIN. 



261 



highly probable, that as the great size of the ears exhibited 
on ancient Eoman coins prove the animals in use by that na- 
tion to have been of the African, and not of the Asiatic spe- 
cies, they must have been tamed by the negroes in the inte- 
rior of Africa. This is the more likely, inasmuch as there is 

phants' tusks weighed 9698 lbs., giving an average of 17^ lbs. In the accom- 
panying note, with which Mr. Simmonds has kindly obliged us, the ivory men- 
tioned refers only to our own trade ; the exports from India and Siam to Chi- 
na, from Zanzibar and the East Coast to India and the United States, and from 
the French African possessions to France, are not included. He takes the av- 
erage weight at 30 lbs., and estimates the number killed annually at 30,000, as 
stated in the text. Elephants, as a rule, never shed their tusks. We have 
only met with pieces broken off when the animal was engaged in digging up 
the roots of trees ; so, practically, every tusk seen in the market belonged to an 
elephant now dead ; and, considering the number of calves destroyed before 
the tusk becomes of any value to the trader, it is probable that 40, 000 is about 
the actual number annually killed. 

We have made no reference to what may be called monster tusks, of from 
130 to 150 lbs. — some are spoken of as upward of 200 lbs. In some parts, the 
average tusk may weigh 60 lbs. ; but, as a set-off to this in the calculation, it 
must be remembered that one of the places not included, namely, Zanzibar, for 
many years received annually 20,000 tusks. 

"Importation of Ivory of all kinds into the United Kingdom — elephants' 
tusks, walruses, and hippopotamus teeth : 



Cwts. 

1856 9,866 

1857 9,890 

1858 12,279 

1859 10,821 

1860 10,854 

1861 11,163 

1862 11,605 

1863 9,290 

8)85,768 
Average 10,721 



£ 
343,517 
421,318 
410,608 
336,147 
332,166 
297,491 
262,962 
256,059 
2,660,268 
332,533 



" The import of hippopotamus teeth and walrus is scarcely more than 10 or 
12 tons a year; therefore it is scarcely worth considering. The difficulty is 
what average weight to take the tusks at. 30 lbs. may be considered a fair 
average. If African do not average much more than 20 or 25 lbs., while for 
Zanzibar and Mozambique the average would be 60 to 80 lbs., taking the aver- 
age at 30 lbs., this would imply the annual slaughter of 20,000 elephants a 
year ; and, taking the eastern and other markets, the number may be fairly es- 
timated at 30,000 animals killed every year for the ivory." 



262 HERD OF FEMALE ELEPHANTS. Chap. XI. 

no instance on record of ancient Europeans daring to tame 
this animal. Never, since the time of the Eomans and Car- 
thaginians, has the African elephant been tamed, though it 
was believed to be much more sagacious than the Asiatic 
species. 

In this hunt a small herd of female elephants, with their 
young, were encountered near a belt of open forest near Mo- 
tunta. Three rifle-balls, including a Jacob's shell, were lodged 
in the body of the nearest ; a smaller one charged back, but 
stopped on seeing so many enemies, and went off with the 
others. The herd waited twice for the wounded one, which 
was not able to keep up, and only left her to her fate when 
self-preservation became the more imperious law. This made 
us imagine that she was perhaps the mother of the herd. 
She ran a mile and a half, and then stopped to lean against a 
tree. A few of our men approached and fired a volley ; she 
went on a few paces, shook her trunk, dropped gently on one 
knee, then on the other; slowly the two hind legs bent, and 
she fell* We read it now with a pang. A shout of exulta- 

* The elephant was an ordinary sized female, and her measurement may be 

of interest to some : 

Ft. in. 

Semi-circumference at middle 

of chest 6 

Semi - circumference of abdo- 
men to middle of back 7 1| 

From neck to fore foot 5 1 

From abdomen to hind foot. ... 3 3^ 
From meatus of ear horizontal- 
ly to external edge 2 9 

Diagonal breadth of ear 4 3 

Height from hind foot 7 6 

Measurement of full-grown fcetal elephant, having four placentas with cotyl- 
edons, and near its full time : 

Height at withers 2 6 I From tip of trunk to tip of tail. 6 

Circumference of fore foot 1 1 From tip of trunk to eye 1 7^- 

Height at hind leg 2 5 | From eye to the meatus of ear. 7i 



Ft. in. 

Height at withers 8 2% 

Circumference of fore foot 3 7 

Length from tip of trunk to 

eye 6 10 

From eye to eye 14^ 

Eye to meatus of ear 1 3^ 

Eye to lower jaw 16| 

Eye to insertion of tail 9 10 

From insertion to end of tail... 3 4^- 



Chap. XL A NIGHT'S FEASTING. 263 

tion rose from the men, who rushed up, and danced round the 
fallen animal with wild shouts of triumph. When we came 
up, Tuba Mokoro approached the doctor, whose Jacob's shell 
had inflicted a mortal wound behind the orifice of the ear, 
and, with great self-complacency, said, "You see it was speed 
that did it — my speed. I kept up while all the others lagged 
behind, though I fell and hurt my knee. You will give me 
a cloth, won't you?" 

The men, having had no meat for the last three or four 
days, thought that they could eat the elephant all themselves, 
and were not disposed to let Seabenzo and his people have 
any ; but, after gorging themselves all night, and grumbling 
at the English for possessing so little practical sense as to kill 
an elephant, and then not wait long enough to eat it up, they 
gave Seabenzo upward of three quarters of it, and we pre- 
sented him with the tusks. The proboscis of the African el- 
ephant is so full at the insertion into the upper part of the 
face that the animal appears to have a very convex forehead. 
The trunk, when cut off close to the bone, is so heavy that 
our companions declared only two or three men in their tribe 
could lift one. 

A herd of elephants makes sad havoc among the trees, 
which cover the highlands only in patches. They break off 
great branches as easily as we could snap the shoots of cele- 
ry ; and they often break down good-sized trees in the mere 
wantonness of strength, without even tasting them. 

During the time we remained at Motunta a splendid me- 
teor was observed to lighten the whole heavens. The ob- 

Ft. in. , Ft. in. 

Horizontal diameter of ear Semi- circumference of abdo- 

from meatus 8 men *. l 8^ 

Diagonal breadth of ear 1 3^- Length of cord 3 7 

Semi-circumference of chest 1 7 



264 METEOR. Chap. XI. 

server's back was turned to it, but on looking round the 
streak of light was seen to remain on its path some seconds. 
This streak is usually explained to be only the continuance 
of the impression made by the shining body on the retina. 
This can not be, as in this case the meteor was not actually 
seen, and yet the streak was clearly perceived. The rays of 
planets and stars also require another explanation than that 
usually given. 

Fruit-trees, and gigantic wild fig- trees, and circles of stones 
on which corn safes were placed, with worn grindstones, point 
out where the villages once stood. The only reason now as- 
sighed for this fine country remaining desolate is the fear of 
fresh visitations by the Matebele. The country now slopes 
gradually to the west into the Makololo Valley. Two days' 
march from the Batoka village nearest the highlands, we met 
with some hunters who were burning the dry grass, in order 
to attract the game by the fresh vegetation which speedily 
springs up afterward. The grass, as already remarked, is ex- 
cellent for cattle. One species, with leaves having finely ser- 
rated edges, and of a reddish -brown color, we noticed our 
men eating : it tastes exactly like liquorice-root, and is named 
kezu-kezu. The tsetse, known to the Batoka by the name 
ndoka, does not exist here, though buffaloes and elephants 
abound. 

A small trap in the path, baited with a mouse, to catch 
spotted cats (F. Genetta), is usually the first indication that 
we are drawing near to a village ; but when we get within 
the sounds of pounding corn, cockcrowing, or the merry 
shouts of children at play, we know that the huts are but a 
few yards off, though the trees conceal them from view. We 
reached, on the 4th of August, Moachemba, the first of the 
Batoka villages which now owe allegiance to Sekeletu, and 



Chap. XL DISTANT VIEW OF THE FALLS. 265 

could see distinctly with the naked eye, in the great valley 
spread out before us, the columns of vapor rising from the 
Yictoria Falls, though upward of 20 miles distant. We were 
informed that, the rains having failed this year, the corn- 
crops had been lost, and great scarcity and much hunger pre- 
vailed from Sesheke to Linyanti. Some of the reports which 
the men had heard from the Batoka of the hills concerning 
their families, were here confirmed. Takelang's wife had 
been killed by Mashotlane, the head man at the Falls, on a 
charge, as usual, of witchcraft. Inchikola's two wives, be- 
lieving him to be dead, had married again ; and Masakasa 
was intensely disgusted to hear that two years ago his friends, 
upon a report of his death, threw his shield over, the Falls, 
slaughtered all his oxen, and held a . species of wild Irish 
wake in honor of his memory : he said he meant to disown 
them, and to sa} r , when they came to salute him, " I am dead. 
I am not here. I belong to another world, and should stink 
if I came among you." 

All the sad news we had previously heard of the disastrous 
results which followed the attempt of a party of missionaries, 
under the Eev. H. Helmore, to plant the Gospel at Linyanti, 
were here fully confirmed. Several of the missionaries and 
their native attendants, from Kuruman, had succumbed to 
the fever, and the survivors had retired some weeks before 
our arrival. We remained the whole of the 7th beside the 
village of the old Batoka chief, Moshobotwane, the stoutest 
man we have seen in Africa. The cause of our delay here 
was a severe attack of fever in Charles Livingstone. He took 
a dose of our fever pills ; was better on the 8th, and marched 
three hours; then on the 9th marched eight miles to the 
Great Falls, and spent the rest of the day in the fatiguing 
exercise of sight-seeing. We were in the very same valley 



266 MOSHOBOTWANE. Chap. XL 

as Linyanti, and this was the same fever which treated, or 
rather maltreated, with only a little Dover's powder, proved 
so fatal to poor Helmore ; the symptoms, too, were identical 
with those afterward described by non-medical persons as 
those of poison. 

We gave Moshobotwane a present, and a pretty plain ex- 
position of what we thought of his bloody forays among his 
Batoka brethren. A scolding does most good to the recipi- 
ent when put alongside some obliging act. He certainly did 
not take it ill, as was evident from what he gave us in re- 
turn, which consisted of a liberal supply of meal, milk, and 
an ox. He has a large herd of cattle, and a tract of fine pas- 
ture-land §>n the beautful stream Lekone. A home-feeling 
comes over one, even in the interior of Africa, at seeing once 
more cattle grazing peacefully in the meadows. The tsetse 
inhabits the trees which bound the pasture-land on the west ; 
so, should the herdsman forget his duty, the cattle straying 
might be entirely lost. The women of this village were 
more numerous than the men, the result of the chief's ma- 
rauding. The Batoka wife of Sima came up from the Falls 
to welcome her husband back, bringing a present of the best 
fruits of the country. Her husband was the only one of the 
party who had brought a wife from Tette, namely, the girl 
whom he obtained from Chisaka for his feats of dancing. 
According to our ideas, his first wife could hardly have been 
pleased at seeing the second and younger one ; but she took 
her away home with her, while the husband remained with 
us. In going down to the Fall village we met several of the 
real Makololo. They are lighter in color than the other 
tribes, being of a rich warm brown ; and they speak in a 
slow, deliberate manner, distinctly pronouncing every word. 
On reaching the village opposite Kalai, we had an interview 



Chap. XI. MEET MAKOLOLO NEAR THE FALLS. 267 

with the Makololo head man, Mashotlane : he came to the 
shed in which we were seated, a little boy carrying his low 
three-legged stool before him : on this he sat down with be- 
coming dignity, looked round him for a few seconds, then at 
us, and, saluting us with " Kumela" (good-morning, or hail), 
he gave us some boiled hippopotamus meat, took a* piece 
himself, and then handed the rest to his attendants, who soon 
ate it up. He defended his forays on the ground that, when 
he went to collect tribute, the Batoka attacked him, and killed 
some of his attendants. The excuses made for their little 
wars are often the very same as those made by Cassar in his 
" Commentaries." Few admit, like old Moshobotwane, that 
they fought because they had the power, and a fair prospect 
of conquering. "We found here Pitsane, who had accom- 
panied the doctor to St. Paul de Loanda. He had been sent 
by Sekeletu to purchase three horses from a trading party of 
Griquas from Kuruman, who charged nine large tusks a piece 
for very wretched animals. 

In the evening, when all was still, one of our men, Take- 
lang, fired his musket, and cried out, " I am weeping for my 
wife: my court is desolate: I have no home;" and then ut- 
tered a loud wail of anguish. 



268 VICTORIA FALLS. Chap. XII. 



CHAPTEE XII. 

4* 

Mosi-oa-tunya, or Victoria Falls. — Visit Garden Island. — Words fail to de- 
scribe the Falls. — Twice the Depth of Niagara. — Mosi-oa-tunya bears the 
Palm. — Filled the native Mind with Awe. — No Portuguese Record of them. 
— Two Slaves reach Tette from Cassange, and make the "Portuguese RoaoV 
across Africa. — Mashotlane and his Prisoner. 

We proceeded next morning, 9th of August, 1860, to see 
the Victoria Falls. Mosi-oa-tunya is the Makololo name, and 
means smoke sounding ; Seongo or Chongwe, meaning the 
Eainbow, or the place of the Eainbow, was the more ancient 
term they bore. We embarked in canoes belonging to Tuba 
Mokoro, " smasher of canoes," an ominous name ; but he 
alone, it seems, knew the medicine which insures one against 
shipwreck in the rapids above the Falls. For some miles 
the river was smooth and tranquil, and we glided pleasantly 
over water clear as crystal, and past lovely islands densely 
covered with a tropical vegetation. Noticeable among the 
many trees were the lofty Hyphsene and Borassus palms; 
the graceful wild date-palm, with its fruit in golden clusters, 
and the umbrageous mokononga, of cypress form, with its 
dark green leaves and scarlet fruit. Many flowers peeped 
out near the water's edge, some entirely new to us, and oth- 
ers, as the convolvulus, old acquaintances. 

But our attention was quickly called from the charming 
islands to the dangerous rapids, down which Tuba might 
unintentionally shoot us. To confess the truth, the very 
ugly aspect of these roaring rapids could scarcely fail to 
cause some uneasiness in the minds of new-comers. It is 
only when the river is very low, as it was now, that any one 



Chap. XII. DANGEEOUS EAPIDS. 269 

durst venture to trie island to which we were bound. If one 
went during the period of flood, and fortunately hit the isl- 
and, he would be obliged to remain there till the water sub- 
sided again, if he lived so long. Both hippopotami and ele- 
phants have been known to be swept over the Falls, and of 
course smashed to pulp. 

Before entering the race of waters, we were requested not 
to speak, as our talking might diminish the virtue of the 
medicine ; and no one with such boiling, eddying rapids be- 
fore his eyes, would think of disobeying the orders of a ''ca- 
noe-smasher." It soon became evident that there was sound 
sense in this request of Tuba's, although the reason assigned 
was not unlike that of the canoe-man from Sesheke, who 
begged one of our party not to whistle, because whistling 
made the wind come. It was the duty of the man at the 
bow to look out ahead for the proper course, and when he 
saw a rock or snag, to call out to the steersman. Tuba doubt- 
less thought that talking on board might divert the attention 
of his steersman, at a time when the neglect of an order, or a 
slight mistake, would be sure -to spill us all into the chafing 
river. There were places where the utmost exertions of 
both men had to be put forth in order to force the canoe to 
the only safe part of the rapid, and to prevent it from sweep- 
ing down broadside on, where in a twinkling we should have 
found ourselves floundering among the plotuses and cor- 
morants, which were engaged in diving for their breakfast 
of small fish. At times it seemed as if nothing could save 
us from dashing in our headlong race against the rocks, 
which, now that the river was low, jutted out of the water; 
but, just at the very nick of time, Tuba passed the word to 
the steersman, and then with ready pole turned the canoe a 
little aside, and we glided swiftly past the threatened danger. 



270 VISIT GAEDEN ISLAND. Chap. XII. 

Never was canoe more admirably managed: once only did 
the medicine seem to have lost something of its efficacy. We 
were driving swiftly down ; a black rock, over which the 
white foam flew, lay directly in our path ; the pole was plant- 
ed against it as readily as ever, but it slipped just as Tuba 
put forth his strength to turn the bow off. We struck hard, 
and were half full of water in a moment ; Tuba recovered 
himself as speedily, shoved off the bow, and shot the canoe 
into a still shallow place, to bale out the water. Here we 
were given to understand that it was not the medicine which 
was at fault ; that had lost none of its virtue ; the accident 
was owing entirely to Tuba having started without his break- 
fast. Need it be said we never let Tuba go without that 
meal again ? 

We landed at the head of Garden Island, which is situated 
near the middle of the river and on the lip of the Falls. On 
reaching that lip and peering over the giddy height, the 
wondrous and unique character of the magnificent cascade at 
once burst upon us. 

It is rather a hopeless task to endeavor to convey an 
idea of it in words, since, as was remarked on the spot, an 
accomplished painter, even by a number of views, could but 
impart a faint impression of the glorious scene. The prob- 
able mode of its formation may perhaps help to the concep- 
tion of its peculiar shape. Niagara has been formed by a 
wearing back of the rock over which the river falls ; and, 
during a long course of ages, it has gradually receded, and 
left a broad, deep, and pretty straight trough in front. It 
goes on wearing back daily, and may yet discharge the lakes 
from which its river — the St. Lawrence — flows. But the 
Victoria Falls have been formed by a crack right across the 
river, in the hard, black, basaltic rock which there formed 



Chap. XII. GREAT DEPTH OF THE FALLS. 271 

the bed of the Zambesi. The lips of the crack are still quite 
sharp, save about three feet of the edge over which the river 
rolls. The walls go sheer down from the lips without any 
projecting crag, or symptom of stratification or dislocation. 
When the mighty rift occurred, no change of level took place 
in the two parts of the bed of the river thus rent asunder ; 
consequently, in coming down the river to Garden Island, 
the water suddenly disappears, and we see the opposite side 
of the cleft, with grass and trees growing where once the 
river ran, on the same level as that part of its bed on which 
we sail. The first crack is, in length, a few yards more than 
the breadth of the Zambesi, which by measurement we found 
to be a little over 1860 yards, but this number we resolved 
to retain as indicating the year in which the Fall was for the 
first time carefully examined. The main stream here runs 
nearly north and south, and the cleft across it is nearly east 
and west. The depth of the rift was measured by lowering 
a line, to the end of which- a few bullets and a foot of white 
cotton cloth were tied. One of us lay with his head over a 
projecting crag, and watched the descending calico, till, after 
his companions had paid out 310 feet, the weight rested on a 
sloping projection, probably 50 feet from the water below, 
the actual bottom being still farther down. The white cloth 
now appeared the size of a crown-piece. On measuring the 
width of this deep cleft by sextant, it was found at Garden 
Island, its narrowest part, to be eighty yards, and at its broad- 
est somewhat more. Into this chasm, of twice the depth of 
Niagara Fall, the river, a full mile wide, rolls with a deafen- 
ing roar ; and this is Mosi-oa-tunya, or the Victoria Falls. 

Looking from Garden Island down to the bottom of the 
abyss, nearly half a mile of water, which has fallen over that 
portion of the Falls to our right, or west of our point of view, 



272 THE ZAMBESI. Chap. XII. 

is seen collected in a narrow channel twenty or thirty yards 
wide, and flowing at exactly right angles to its previous 
course, to our left ; while the other half, or that which fell 
over the eastern portion of the Falls, is seen in the left of the 
narrow channel below, coming toward our right. Both wa- 
ters unite midway, in a fearful boiling whirlpool, and find an 
outlet by a crack situated at right angles to the fissure of 
the Falls. This outlet is about 1170 yards from the western 
end of the chasm, and some 600 from its eastern end ; the 
whirlpool is at its commencement. The Zambesi, now ap- 
parently not more than twenty or thirty yards wide, rushes 
and surges south, through the narrow escape-channel for 130 
yards ; then enters a second chasm somewhat deeper, and 
nearly parallel with the first. Abandoning the bottom of the 
eastern half of this second chasm to the growth of large trees, 
it turns sharply off to the west, and forms a promontory, 
with the escape-channel at its point, of 1170 yards long, and 
416 yards broad at the base. After reaching this base the 
river runs abruptly round the head of another promontory, 
and flows away to the east, in a third chasm ; then glides 
round a third promontory, much narrower than the rest, and 
away back to the west, in a fourth chasm ; and we could see 
in the distance that it appeared to round still another prom- 
ontory, and bend once more in another chasm toward the 
east. In this gigantic, zigzag, yet narrow trough, the rocks 
are all so sharply cut and angular, that the idea at once 
arises that the hard basaltic trap must have been riven into 
its present shape by a force acting from beneath, and that this 
probably took place when the ancient inland seas were let 
off by similar fissures nearer the ocean. 

The land beyond, or on the south of the Falls, retains, as 
already remarked, the same level as before the rent was 



Chap. XII. BEST VIEW OF THE GREAT FALL. 273 

made. It is as if the trough below Niagara were bent right 
and left several times before it reached the railway bridge. 
The land in the supposed bends, being of the same height as 
that above the Fall, would give standing-places, or points of 
view, of the same nature as that from the railway bridge ; 
but the nearest would be only eighty yards, instead of two 
miles (the distance to the bridge), from the face of the cascade. 
The tops of the promontories are in general flat, smooth, and 
studded with trees. The first, with its base on the east, is at 
one place so narrow that it would be dangerous to walk to 
its extremity. On the second, however, we found a broad rhi- 
noceros path and a hut ; but, unless the builder were a her- 
mit, with a pet rhinoceros, we can not conceive what beast or 
man ever went there for. On reaching the apex of this sec- 
ond eastern promontory we saw the great river, of a deep 
sea-green color, now sorely compressed, gliding away at least 
400 feet below us.* 

Garden Island, when the river is low, commands the best 
view of the Great Fall chasm, as also of the promontory op- 
posite, with its grove of large evergreen trees, and brilliant 
rainbows of three quarters of a circle, two, three, and some- 
times even four in number, resting on the face of the vast 
perpendicular rock, down which tiny streams are always run- 
ning, to be swept again back by the upward rushing vapor. 

* We have twice used the word "glide" in the above description, and wish 
to convey the idea that the river, although so torn, tossed, and buffeted in the 
Fall chasm, slips round the points of the promontories with a resistless flow, 
unbroken save by a peculiar churning, eddying motion. This gave us the im- 
pression that the cleft must be prodigiously deep to allow all the water poured 
into it to pass so untumultuously away ; and it may here be remarked that in 
the frontispiece, a sketch of which was sent to Sir Roderick Murchison from the 
spot in 1860, the land forming the promontories is necessarily depressed to ex- 
hibit the Falls, though it is not so in nature. The foreground of this bird's-eye 
view has more vegetation than actually appears ; far away from the influence 
of the vapor, the rocks are rather bare. 

s 



274 DESCRIPTION OF THE FALLS. Chap. XII. 

But as, at Niagara, one has to go over to the Canadian shore 
to see the chief wonder — the Great Horse-shoe Fall — so here 
we have to cross over to Moselekatse's side, to the promonto- 
ry of evergreens, for the best view of the principal Falls of 
Mosi-oa-tunya. Beginning, therefore, at the base of this prom- 
ontory, and facing the cataract, at the west end of the chasm 
there is, first, a fall of thirty -six yards in breadth, and of 
course, as they all are, upward of 310 feet in depth. Then 
Boaruka, a small island, intervenes, and next comes a great 
fall, with a breadth of 573 yards ; a projecting rock separates 
this from a second grand fall of 325 yards broad ; in all up- 
ward of 900 yards of perennial falls. Farther east stands 
Garden Island; then, as the river was at its lowest, came a 
good deal of the bare rock of its bed, with a score of narrow 
falls, which, at the time of flood, constitute one enormous cas- 
cade of nearly another half mile. Near the east end of the 
chasm are two larger falls, but they are nothing at low water 
compared to those between the islands. 

The whole body of water rolls clear over, quite unbroken ; 
but, after a descent of ten or more feet, the entire mass sud- 
denly becomes like a huge sheet of driven snow. Pieces of 
water leap off it in the form of comets with tails streaming 
behind, till the whole snowy sheet becomes myriads of rush- 
ing, leaping, aqueous comets. This peculiarity was not ob- 
served by Charles Livingstone at Niagara, and here it hap- 
pens, possibly from the dryness of the atmosphere, or what- 
ever the cause may be which makes every drop of Zambesi 
water appear to possess a sort of individuality. It runs off 
the ends of the paddles, and glides in beads along the smooth 
surface, like drops of quicksilver on a table. Here we see 
them in a conglomeration, each with a train of pure white 
vapor, racing down till lost in clouds of spray. A stone 



Chap. XII. MOSI-OA-TUNYA EXCELS NIAGARA. 275 

dropped in became less and less to the eye, and at last dis- 
appeared in the dense mist below. 

Charles Livingstone had seen Niagara, and gave Mosi-oa- 
tunya the palm, though now at the end of a drought, and the 
river at its very lowest. Many feel a disappointment on first 
seeing the great American Falls, but Mosi - oa - tuny a is so 
strange, it must ever cause wonder. In the amount of water 
Niagara probably excels, though not during the months when 
the Zambesi is in flood. The vast bodyjof water, separating 
in the comet-like forms described, necessarily incloses in its 
descent a large volume of air, which, forced into the cleft to 
an unknown depth, rebounds, and rushes up loaded with va- 
por, to form the three or even six columns, as if of steam, vis- 
ible at the Batoka village Moachemba, twenty-one miles dis- 
tant. On attaining a height of 200, or at most 300 feet from 
the level of the river above the cascade, this vapor becomes 
condensed into a perpetual shower of fine rain. Much of the 
spray, rising to the west of Garden Island, falls on the grove 
of evergreen trees opposite ; and from their leaves heavy 
drops are forever falling, to form sundry little rills, which, in 
running down the steep face of rock, are blown off and turn- 
ed back, or licked off their perpendicular bed up into the col- 
umn from which they have just descended. 

The morning sun gilds these columns of watery smoke 
with all the glowing colors of double or treble rainbows. 
The evening sun, from a hot yellow sky, imparts a sulphure- 
ous hue, and gives one the impression that the yawning gulf 
might resemble the mouth of the bottomless pit. No bird sits 
and sings on the branches of the grove of perpetual showers, 
or ever builds its nest there. We saw hornbills, and flocks 
of little black weavers flying across from the main land to 
the islands, and from the islands to the points of the promon- 



276 SACRED SPOTS. Chap. XII, 

tories and back again, but they uniformly shunned the re- 
gion of perpetual rain, occupied by the evergreen grove. The 
sunshine, elsewhere in this land so overpowering, never pen- 
etrates the deep gloom of that shade. In the presence of the 
strange Mosi-oa-tunya, we can sympathize with those who, 
when the world was young, peopled earth, air, and river with 
beings not of mortal form. Sacred to what deity would be 
this awful chasm and that dark grove, over which hovers an 
ever-abiding " pillar of cloud ?" 

The ancient Batoka chieftains used Kazeruka, now Garden 
Island, and Boaruka, the island farther west, also on the lip 
of the Falls, as sacred spots for worshiping the Deity. It is 
no wonder that under the cloudy columns, and near the bril- 
liant rainbows, with the ceaseless roar of the cataract, with 
the perpetual flow, as if pouring forth from the hand of the 
Almighty, their souls should be filled with reverential awe. 
It inspired wonder in the native mind throughout the inte- 
rior. Among the first questions asked by Sebituane of Mr. 
Oswell and Dr. Livingstone, in 1851, was, " Have you any 
smoke soundings in your country?" and iu What causes the 
smoke to rise for ever so high out of water?" In that year 
its fame was heard 200 miles off, and it was approached with- 
in two days ; but it was seen by no European till 1855, when 
Dr. Livingstone visited it on his way to the East Coast. Be- 
ing then accompanied as far as this fall by Sekeletu and 200 
followers, his stay was necessarily short ; and the two days 
there were employed in observations for fixing the geograph- 
ical position of the place, and turning the showers, that at 
times sweep from the columns of vapor across the island, to 
account, in teaching the Makololo arboriculture, and making 
that garden from which the natives named the island, so that 
lie did not visit the opposite sides of the cleft, nor see the 



Chap. XII. DESTRUCTIYENESS OF HIPPOPOTAMI. 277 

wonderful course of the river beyond the Falls. The hippo- 
potami had destroyed the trees which were then planted; and, 
though a strong stockaded hedge was made again, and living 
orange-trees, cashew-nuts, and coffee seeds put in afresh, we 
fear that the perseverance of the hippopotami will overcome 
the obstacle of the hedge.* It would require a resident mis- 
sionary to rear European fruit-trees. The period at which 
the peach and apricot come into blossom is about the end of 
the dry season, and artificial irrigation is necessary. The Ba- 
toka, the only arboriculturists in the country, rear native fruit- 
trees alone — the mosibe, the motsikiri, the boma, and others. 
When a tribe takes an interest in trees, it becomes more at- 
tached to the spot on which they are planted, and they prove 
one of the civilizing influences. 

Before leaving the most wonderful Falls in the world, one 
may be excused for referring to the fact that, though they 
had produced a decided impression on the native mind in the 
interior, no intelligence of their existence ever reached the 
Portuguese. About 1809, two black slaves, named Pedro 
Baptista and Andre Jose, were sent from Cassange, a village 
three hundred miles from the West Coast, through the coun- 
try of Cazembe, to Tette, nearly an equal distance from the 

* The Victoria Falls were visited by Sir Richard Glyn, Bart., and his broth- 
er, when on a hunting excursion in 1863. They visited Garden Island, and 
found that our fears of the depredations of the hippopotami had been only too 
well founded. The fruit-trees had been destroyed. Sir Richard kindly deep- 
ened the initials " D. L., 1855," made on a tree on the island when the discov- 
ery took place, and the only case in which the letters had been cut by Dr. Liv- 
ingstone in the country. Traders and others also have visited the country 
south of the Falls, but we have not seen any new ground described in that quar- 
ter, nor does any one else seem to have gone over to the eastern side, and 
again seen the chasms there. The river Lofikwe or Quai, said to have canoes 
upon it, and to join the Zambesi between Mosi-oa-tunya and Sinamane's, might 
be interesting to explorers ; and Moselekatse, the paramount lord of the people 
there, is known to be favorable to the English. 



278 DONNA EUGENIA. Chap. XII. 

East Coast. A lady now living at Tette, Donna Eugenia, re- 
members distinctly these slayes — their woolly hair dressed in 
the Londa fashion — arriving and remaining at Tette till let- 
ters came from the Governor General of Mozambique, which 
they successfully carried back to Cassange. On this slender 
fibre hangs all the Portuguese pretension to having possessed 
a road across Africa. Their maps show the source of the 
Zambesi S.S.W. of Zumbo, about where the Falls were found ; 
and on this very questionable authority an untraveled En- 
glish map-maker, with most amusing assurance, asserts that 
the river above the Falls runs under the Kalahari Desert and 
is lost 

Where one Englishman goes, others are sure to follow. 
Mr. Baldwin, a gentleman from Natal, succeeded in reaching 
the Falls guided by his pocket-compass alone. On meeting 
the second subject of her majesty who had ever beheld the 
greatest of African wonders, we found him a sort of prisoner 
at large. He had called on Mashotlane to ferry him over to 
the north side of the river, and, when nearly over, he took 
a bath by jumping in and swimming ashore. "If," said 
Mashotlane, " he had been devoured by one of the crocodiles 
which abound there, the English would have blamed us for 
his death. He nearly inflicted a great injury upon us, there- 
fore we said he must pay a fine." As Mr. Baldwin had noth- 
ing with him wherewith to pay, they were taking care of him 
till he should receive beads from his wagon two days distant. 

Mashotlane's education had been received in the camp of 
Sebituane, where but little regard was paid to human life. 
He was not yet in his prime, and his fine open countenance 
presented to us no indication of the evil influences which un- 
happily, from infancjr, had been at work on his mind. The 
native eye was more penetrating than ours ; for the expres- 



Chap. XII. GROUND STREWN WITH AGATES. 279 

sion of our men was, " He has drunk the blood of men — 
you may see it in his eyes." He made no farther difficulty 
about Mr. Baldwin ; but, the week after we left, he inflicted 
a severe wound on the head of one of his wives with his 
rhinoceros-horn club. She, beiDg of a good family, left him, 
and we subsequently met her and another of his wives pro- 
ceeding up the country. 

The ground is strewn with agates for a number of miles 
above the Falls ; but the fires, which burn off the grass year- 
ly, have injured most of those on the surface. Our men were 
delighted to hear that the}^ do as well as flints for muskets ; 
and this, with the new ideas of the value of gold (dalama) and 
malachite that they had acquired at Tette, made them con- 
ceive that we were not altogether silly in picking up and 
looking at stones. 



280 NAMBOWE AND HIS WIVES. Chap. XIII. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Condition of Fugitives and Captives in native Tribes. — Servitude in the Inte- 
rior light as compared to Slavery on the Coast. — Molele's Village. — Scarcity 
of Food. — Tianyane identical with Ourebi. — The Poku. — Dr. Livingstone 
consulted on the Value of Horses. — Mparira, village of Mokompa. — Sting- 
less Bee. — Take Canoe for Sesheke. — Sekeletu's Attempt at enforcing Quaran- 
tine. — The Chiefs' Messengers. — "The Argument" for learning to read. — 
"Free Pratique." — Native Instructions. — The Cattle-post School. — Sesheke 
Old and New Town. — Sekeletu. — Nothing like Beef. — "Beef with andBeef 
without." — Visitors. — Sekeletu's Leprosy and its attendant Evils. — Disease 
pronounced Incurable by native Doctors. — Taken in hand by a Doctress. — 
Handed over to Drs. Livingstone and Kirk. — Improvement of the Patient. 
— Description of the Disease. — Tea and preserved Fruits from Benguela. — 
No Ivory, no Slave-trade. — Effect of Sekeletu's Orders in closing the Slave- 
market. — Fashion. — Horse-dealing. — Peculiar Style of Racing. — " The 
household Cavalry." — Produce of the Interior in Grain. — No Vegetables. — 
No Fruit. — Mr. Baldwin, and Mr. Helmore's Party. — Sad breaking up of the 
Mission. — Fever, not Poison, the cause of Deaths. 

Marching up the river, we crossed the Lekone at its con- 
fluence, about eight miles above the island Kalai, and went 
on to a village opposite the island Chundu. Nambowe, the 
head man, is one of the Matebele or Zulus, who have had to 
flee from the anger of Moselekatse, to take refuge with the 
Makololo. During our interview, his six handsome wives 
came and sat behind him. He had only two children. The 
ladies were amused with our question whether they ever 
quarreled, to which the monster answered, "Oh yes, they are 
always quarreling among themselves." Among the Coast 
tribes a fugitive is almost always sold, but here a man retains 
the same rank he held in his own tribe. The children of 
captives even have the same privileges as the children of 
their captors. The Rev. T. M. Thomas, a missionary now 



Chap. XIII. SERVITUDE COMPARATIVELY LIGHT. 281 

living with Moselekatse, finds the same system prevailing 
among his Zulus or Matebele. He says that " the African 
slave brought by a foray to the tribe enjoys from the begin- 
ning the privileges and name of a child, and looks upon his 
master and mistress in every respect as his new parents. He 
is not only nearly his master's equal, but he may, with im- 
punity, leave his master and go wherever he likes within the 
boundary of the kingdom : although a bondman or servant, 
his position, especially in Moselekatse's country, does not 
convey the true idea of a state of slavery ; for, by care and 
diligence, he may soon become a master himself, and even 
more rich and powerful than he who led him captive." 

The practice pursued by these people on returning from a 
foray, of selling the captives to each other for corn or cattle, 
might lead one to imagine that slavery existed in all its in- 
tensity among the native Africans ; but Mr. Thomas, observ- 
ing, as we have often done, the actual working of the system, 
says very truly, "Neither the punctuality, quickness, thor- 
oughness, nor amount of exertion is required by the African 
as by the European master* In Europe the difficulty is want 
of time ; in Africa, what is to be done with it." Apart from 
the shocking waste of life, which takes place in these and all 
slave forays, their slavery is not so repulsive as it always be- 
comes in European hands. It is perhaps a failure in a trav- 
eler to be affected with a species of home-sickness, so that the 
mind always turns from the conditions and circumstances of 
the poor abroad to the state of the lonely in our native land ; 
but so it is. When we see with how much ease the very low- 
est class here can subsist, we can not help remembering, with 
sorrow, with what difficulty our own poor can manage to live 
— with' what timid eagerness employment is sought — how 
hard the battle of life ; while so much of this fair earth re- 



282 MOLELE'S VILLAGE. Chap. XIII. 

mains unoccupied, and not put to the benevolent purpose for 
which it was intended by its Maker. 

We spent Sunday, the 12th, at the village of Molele, a tall 
old Batoka, who was proud of having formerly been a great 
favorite with Sebituane. In coming hither we passed through 
patches of forest abounding in all sorts of game. The ele- 
phants' tusks, placed over graves, are now allowed to decay, 
and the skulls, which the former Batoka stuck on poles to 
ornament their villages, not being renewed, now crumble into 
dust. Here the famine, of which we had heard, became ap- 
parent, Molele's people being employed in digging up the 
tsitla root out of the marshes, and cutting out the soft core of 
the young palm-trees for food. 

The village, situated on the side of a wooded ridge, com- 
mands an extensive view of a great expanse of meadow and 
marsh lying along the bank of the river. On these holmes 
herds of buffaloes and waterbucks daily graze in security, as 
they have in the reedy marshes a refuge into which they can 
run on the approach of danger. The pretty little tinyane or 
ourebi is abundant farther on,* an*d herds of blue weldebeests 

* From being entirely unknown in the Bechuana country south, of this, it 
was thought to be a new antelope, and is so mentioned by Dr. Livingstone ; 
but the description of the appearance, gait, alarm-call, and habits (given by an- 
other African traveler, Mr. W. F. Webb) of the ourebi, as found in Natal, 
leaves no doubt but that the two animals are identical. Having made this 
mistake himself, Dr. Livingstone is quite disposed to be lenient to others ; but 
would respectfully suggest a doubt, whether it be advisable to multiply names 
when there is no more variation than a bend in the shape of the horns, or a 
slight difference in the color of the hair. An eland, for instance, described, 
from specimens shot on these very plains in 1853, as retaining in maturity the 
stripes which appear on the young of all elands in the Kalahari Desert, ten 
years later has been rediscovered as djikijunka, named from specimens seen in 
"West Africa. This has been the case also with the nakong or nzoe, and the 
reason assigned in this case was its being "faintly spotted." A young water- 
buck's head has also been brought from West Africa and figured as a new spe- 
cies; and the common bushbuck was called A. Rouakyni, though well known 
and described before any of us were born. 



Chap. XIII. THE POKU. 283 

or brindled gnus (Kalohlepas Gorgon) amused us by their fan- 
tastic capers. They present a much more ferocious aspect 
than the lion himself, but are quite timid. We never could, 
by waving a red handkerchief, according to the prescription, 
induce them to venture near to us. It may therefore be that 
the red color excites their fury only wh^n wounded or hotly 
pursued. Herds of lechee or lechwe now enliven the mead- 
ows; and they and their younger brother, the graceful poku, 
smaller, and of a rounder contour, race together toward the 
grassy fens. "We ventured to call the poku after the late 
Major Vardon, a noble-hearted African traveler ; but fully 
anticipate that some aspiring Nimrod will prefer that his own 
name should go down to posterity on the back of this buck. 

Midway between Tabacheu and the Great Falls the streams 
begin to flow westward. On the other side they flow east. 
Large round masses of granite, somewhat like old castles, 
tower aloft about the Kalomo. The country is an elevated 
plateau, and our men knew and named the different plains 
as we passed them by. , 

On the 13th we met a party from Sekeletu, who was now 
at Sesheke. Our approach had been reported, and they had 
been sent to ask the doctor what the price of a horse ought 
to be ; and what he said, that they were to give and no more. 
In reply they were told that by their having given nine large 
tusks for one horse before the doctor came, the Griquas would 
naturally imagine that the price was already settled. It was 
exceedingly amusing to witness the exact imitation they gave 
of the swagger of a certain white with whom they had been 
dealing, and who had, as they had perceived, evidently wish- 
ed to assume an air of indifference. Holding up the head 
and scratching the beard it was hinted might indicate not in- 
difference, but vermin. It is well that we do not always 



284 STINGLESS BEE. Chap. XIII. 



k 



know what they say about us. The remarks are often not 
quite complimentary, and resemble closely what certain white 
travelers say about the blacks. 

We made our camp in the afternoon abreast of the large 
island called Mparira, opposite the mouth of the Chobe. Fran- 
colins, quails, and Guinea-fowls, as well as larger game, were 
abundant. The Makololo head man, Mokompa, brought us 
a liberal present ; and, in the usual way, which is considered 
politeness, regretted he had no milk, as his cows were all dry. 
We got some honey here from the very small stingless bee, 
called by the Batoka moandi, and by others the kokomat- 
sane. This honey is slightly acid, and has an aromatic fla- 
vor. The bees are easily known from their habit of buzzing 
about the eyes, and tickling the skin by sucking it as com- 
mon flies do. The hive has a tube of wax like a quill for its 
entrance, and is usually in the hollows of trees. 

Mokompa feared that the tribe was breaking up, and la- 
mented the condition into which they had fallen in conse- 
quence of Sekeletu's leprosy ; he did not know what was to 
become of them. He sent two canoes to take us up to Se- 
sheke ; his best canoe had taken ivory up to the chief, to pur- 
chase goods of some native traders from Benguela. Above 
the Falls the paddlers always stand in the canoes, using long 
paddles ten feet in length, and changing from side to side 
without losing the stroke. 

Mochokotsa, a messenger from Sekeletu, met us on the 17th 
with another request for the doctor to take ivory and pur- 
chase a horse. He again declined to interfere. None were 
to come up to Sekeletu but the doctor ; and all the men who 
had had small-pox at Tette three years ago were to go back 
to Moshobotwane, and he would sprinkle medicine over them 
to drive away the infection, and prevent it spreading in the 



Chap; XIII. SEKELETU'S MESSENGER. 285 

tribe. Mochokotsa was told to say to Sekeletu that the dis- 
ease was known of old to white men, and we even knew the 
medicine to prevent it; and, were there any danger now, we 
should be the first to warn him of it. Why did not he go 
himself to have Moshobotane sprinkle medicine to drive away 
his leprosy ? We were not afraid of his disease, nor of the 
fever that had killed the teachers and many Makololo at Lin- 
yanti. As this attempt at quarantine was evidently the sug- 
gestion of native doctors to increase their own importance, 
we added that we had no food, and would hunt next day for 
game, and the day after ; and, should we be still ordered pu- 
rification by their medicine, we should then return to our 
own country. 

The message was not all of our dictation ; our companions 
interlarded it with their own indignant protests, and said 
some strong things in the Tette dialect about these " doctor 
things" keeping them back from seeing their father; when, 
to their surprise, Mochokotsa told them he knew every word 
they were saying, as he was of the tribe Bazizulu, and defied 
them to deceive him by any dialect, either of the Mashona 
on the east, or of the Mambari on the west. Mochokotsa 
then repeated our message twice, to be sure that he had it 
every word, and went back again. These chiefs' messengers 
have most retentive memories ; they carry messages of con- 
siderable length great distances, and deliver them almost word 
for word. Two or three usually go together, and when on 
the way the message is rehearsed every night, in order that 
the exact words may be kept to. One of the native objec- 
tions to learning to write is that these men answer the pur- 
pose of transmitting intelligence to a distance as well as a let- 
ter would ; and, if a person wishes to communicate with any 
one in the town, the best way to do so is either to go to or 



286 EEASON FOR LEARNING TO READ. Chap. XIII. 

send for him ; and as for corresponding with friends very far 
off, that is all very well for white people, but the blacks have 
no friends to whom to write. The only effective argument 
for their learning to read is that it is their duty to know the 
revelation from their Father in Heaven as it stands in the 
Book. 

Our messenger returned on the evening of the following 
day with "You speak truly," says Sekeletu; "the disease is 
old ; come on at once ; do not sleep in the path ; for I am 
greatly desirous (tlologelecoe) to see the doctor." 

After Mochokotsa left us, we met some of Mokompa's men 
bringing back the ivory, as horses were preferred to the West 
Coast goods. They were the bearers of instructions to Mo- 
kompa, and as these instructions illustrate the government 
of people who have learned scarcely any thing from Euro- 
peans, they are inserted, though otherwise of no importance. 
Mashotlane had not behaved so civilly to Mr. Baldwin as Se- 
keletu had ordered him to do to all Englishmen. He had 
been very uncivil to the messengers sent by Moselekatse with 
letters from Mr. Moffat, treated them as spies, and would not 
land to take the bag until they moved off. On our speaking 
to him about this, he justified his conduct on the plea that he 
was set at the Falls for the very purpose of watching these, 
their natural enemies ; and how was he to know that they 
had been sent by Mr. Moffat? Our men thereupon reported 
at head-quarters that Mashotlane had cursed the doctor. The 
instructions to Mokompa from Sekeletu were to "go and tell 
Mashotlane that he had offended greatly. He had not cursed 
Monare (Dr. Livingstone), but Sebituane, as Monare was now 
in the place of Sebituane, and he reverenced him as he had 
done his father. Any fine taken from Mr. Baldwin was to 
be returned at once, as he was not a Boer, but an English- 



Chap. XIII. THE CATTLE-POST SCHOOL. 287 

man. Sekeletu was very angry, and Mokompa must not 
conceal the message." 

On finding afterward that Mashotlane's conduct had been 
most outrageous to the Batoka, Sekeletu sent for him to come 
to Sesheke, in order that he might have him more under his 
own eye ; but Mashotlane, fearing that this meant the punish- 
ment of death, sent a polite answer, alleging that he was ill 
and unable to travel. Sekeletu tried again to remove Ma- 
shotlane from the Falls, but without success. In theory the 
chief is absolute and quite despotic ; in practice his authority 
is limited, and he can not, without occasionally putting re- 
fractory head men to death, force his subordinates to do his 
will. 

Except the small rapids by Mparira Island, near the mouth 
of the Chobe, the rest of the way to Sesheke by water is 
smooth. Herds of cattle of two or three varieties graze on 
the islands in the river : the Batoka possessed a very small 
breed of beautiful shape, and remarkably tame, and many 
may still be seen ; a larger kind, many of which have horns 
pendent, and loose at the roots ; and a still larger sort, with 
horns of extraordinary dimensions, apparently a burden for 
the beast to carry. This breed was found in abundance at 
Lake ISTgami. We stopped at noon at one of the cattle-posts 
of Mokompa, and had a refreshing drink of milk. Men of 
his standing have usually several herds placed at different 
spots, and the owner visits each in turn, while his head-quar- 
ters are at his village. His son, a boy often, had charge of 
the establishment during his father's absence. According to 
Makololo ideas, the cattle-post is the proper school in which 
sons should be brought up. Here they receive the right 
sort of education — the knowledge of pasture, and how to man- 
age cattle. 



288 STRONG EASTERLY WINDS. Chap. XIII. 

Strong easterly winds blow daily from noon till midnight, 
and continue till the October or November rains set in. 
Whirlwinds, raising huge pillars of smoke from burning grass 
and weeds, are common in the forenoon. We were nearly 
caught in an immense one. It crossed about twenty yards 
in front of us, the wind apparently rushing into it from all 
points of the compass. Whirling round and round in great 
eddies, it swept up hundreds of feet into the air a continuous 
dense dark cloud of the black pulverized soil, mixed with 
dried grass, off the plain. Herds of the new antelopes, lechwe, 
and poku, with the kokong, or gnus, and zebras, stood gazing 
at us as we passed. The mirage lifted them at times half 
way to the clouds, and twisted them and the clumps of palms 
into strange unearthly forms. The extensive and rich level 
plains by the banks, along the sides of which we paddled, 
would support a vast population, and might be easily irri- 
gated from the Zambesi. If watered, they would yield crops 
all the year round, and never suffer loss by drought. The 
hippopotamus is killed here with long lance-like spears. We 
saw two men, in a light canoe, stealing noiselessly down on 
one of these animals thought to be asleep ; but it was on the 
alert, and they had quickly to retreat. Comparatively few 
of these animals now remain between Sesheke and the Falls, 
and they are uncommonly wary, as it is certain death for one 
to be caught napping in the daytime. 

On the 18th we entered Sesheke. The oTd town, now in 
ruins, stands on the left bank of the river. The people have 
built another on the same side, a quarter of a mile higher up, 
since their head man Moriantsiane was put to death for be- 
witching the chief with leprosy. Sekeletu was on the right 
bank, near a number of temporary huts. A man hailed us 
from the chief's quarters, and requested us to rest under the 



Chap. XIII. NOTHING LIKE BEEF. 289 

old kotla, or public meeting-place tree. A young Makololo, 
with the large thighs which Zulus and most of this tribe 
have, crossed over to receive orders from the chief, who had 
not shown himself to the people since he was affected with 
leprosy. On returning he ran for Mokele, the head man of 
the new town, who, after going over to Sekeletu, came back 
and conducted us to a small but good hut, and afterward 
brought us a fine fat ox as a present from the chief. " This 
is a time of hunger," he said, "and we have no meat, but we 
expect some soon from the Barotse Valley." We were en- 
tirely out of food when we reached Sesheke. Never was 
better meat than that of the ox Sekeletu sent, and infinitely 
above the flesh of all kinds of game is classic beef! We have 
partaken of the flesh of all the eatable animals in Africa ex- 
cept the crocodile, and often under circumstances when a 
keen appetite might be supposed to give a bias to the judg- 
ment in favor of the game ; yet all that could be said of the 
best was, it is nearly as good as the flesh of oxen. Possibly 
some animals still untamed might be found to turn to good 
account land covered with pasture such as heather or brack- 
ens, otherwise useless for cattle; but we say, Let the "Ac- 
climatization Society" increase and multiply the number of 
beeves, and it will please the taste and benefit humanity 
more than it possibly could by the introduction of every wild 
animal from the elephant down to the crocodile. It must be 
confessed, however, that to the uninitiated it is rather awk- 
ward to sit down to a meal of nothing but beef, however ex- 
cellent. On taking a mouthful, hands and eyes turn instinct- 
ively in search of something in the form of bread, potatoes, 
or vegetables to accompany it, and there is an unpleasant 
sensation of wanting what the Scotch know by the word 
" kitchen" (ot//ov). We made the flit kitchen the lean. The 

T 



290 SEKELETU'S LEPEOSY. Chap. XIII. 

Makololo usually devour all the fat first, that being consid- 
ered the best, and afterward eat the lean, and, last of all, the 
porridge or bread, if they have any. The people who, like 
them, live much on milk and meat, can bear fatigue and 
privation much better than those whose sustenance is chiefly 
grain and pulse. When the Makololo go on a foray, as they 
sometimes do, a month distant, many of the subject tribes 
who accompany them, being grain eaters, perish from sheer 
fatigue, while the beef eaters scorn the idea of even being 
tired. 

A constant stream of visitors rolled in on us the day after 
our arrival. Several of them, who had suffered affliction 
during the doctor's absence, seemed to be much affected on 
seeing him again. All were in low spirits. A severe 
drought had cut off the crops, and destroyed the pasture of 
Linyanti, and the people were scattered over the country 
in search of wild fruits, and the hospitality of those whose 
ground-nuts {Arachis liypogcea) had not failed. Sekeletu's 
leprosy brought troops of evils in its train. Believing him- 
self bewitched, he had suspected a number of his chief men, 
and had put some, with their families, to death ; others had 
fled to distant tribes, and were living in exile. The chief 
had shut himself up, and allowed no one to come into his 
presence but his uncle Mamire. Ponwane, who had been as 
" head and eyes" to him, had just died ; evidence, he thought, 
of the potent spells of those who hated all who loved the 
chief. The country was suffering grievously, and Sebitu- 
ane's grand empire was crumbling to pieces. A large body 
of young Barotse had revolted and fled to the north, killing 
a man by the way, in order to put a blood-feud between 
Masiko, the chief to whom they were going, and Sekeletu. 
The Batoka under Sinamane, and Muemba, were, in depend- 



Chap. XIII. SEKELETU'S LEPROSY. 291 

ent, and Mashotlane at the Falls was setting Sekeletu's au- 
thority virtually at defiance. Sebituane's wise policy in 
treating the conquered tribes on equal terms with his own 
Makololo, as all children of the chief, and equally eligible 
to the highest honors, had been abandoned by his son, who 
married none but Makololo women, and appointed to office 
none but Makololo men. He had become unpopular among 
the black tribes, conquered by the spear, but more effectu- 
ally won by the subsequent wise and just government of his 
father. 

Strange rumors were afloat respecting the unseen Sekele- 
tu ; his fingers were said to have grown like eagle's claws, 
and his face so frightfully distorted that no one could recog- 
nize him. Some had begun to hint that he might not really 
be the son of the great Sebituane, the founder of the nation, 
strong in battle, and wise in the affairs of state. "In the 
days of the Great Lion" (Sebituane), said his only sister, Mo- 
riantsiane's widow, whose husband Sekeletu had killed, " we 
had chiefs, and little chiefs, and elders to carry on the gov- 
ernment, and the great chief, Sebituane, knew them all, and 
every thing they did, and the whole country was wisely 
ruled ; but now Sekeletu knows nothing of what his under- 
lings do, and they care not for him, and the Makololo power 
is fast passing away."* 

* In 1865, four years after these forebodings were penned, we received intel- 
ligence that they had all come to pass. Sekeletu died in the beginning of 
1864 : a civil war broke out about the succession to the chieftainship; a large 
body of those opposed to the late chiefs uncle, Impololo, being regent, depart- 
ed with their cattle to Lake Ngami ; an insurrection by the black tribes fol- 
lowed ; Impololo was slain, and the kingdom, of which, under an able, saga- 
cious mission, a vast deal might have been made, has suffered the usual fate of 
African conquests. That fate we deeply deplore ; for, whatever other faults 
the Makololo might justly be charged with, they did not belong to the class 
who buv and sell each other, and the tribes who have succeeded them do. 



292 NATIVE DOCTORS. Chap. XIII. 

The native doctors had given the case of Sekeletu up. 
They could not cure him, and pronounced the disease incur- 
able. An old doctress from the Manyeti tribe had come to 
see what she could do for him, and on her skill he now hung 
his last hopes. She allowed no one to see him except his 
mother and uncle, making entire seclusion from society an 
essential condition of the much-longed-for cure. He sent, 
notwithstanding, for the doctor ; and on the following day we 
all three were permitted to see him. He was sitting in a cov- 
ered wagon, which was inclosed by a high wall of close-set 
reeds ; his face was only slightly disfigured by the thicken- 
ing of the skin in parts, where the leprosy had passed over 
it ; and the only peculiarity about his hands was the extreme 
length of his finger-nails, which, however, was nothing very 
much out of the way, as all the Makololo gentlemen wear 
them uncommonly long. He has the quiet, unassuming man- 
ners of his father, Sebituane ; speaks distinctly, in a low, pleas- 
ant voice, and appears to be a sensible man, except perhaps 
on the subject of his having been bewitched, and in this, 
when alluded to, he exhibits as firm a belief as* if it were his 
monomania. " Moriantsiane, my aunt's husband, tried the be- 
witching medicine first on his wife, and she is leprous, and so 
is her head servant ; then, seeing that it succeeded, he gave 
me a stronger dose in the cooked flesh of a goat, and I have 
had the disease ever since. They have lately killed Pon- 
wane, and, as you see, are now killing me." Ponwane had 
died of fever a short time previously. Sekeletu as"ked us for 
medicine and medical attendance, but we did not like to take 
the case out of the hands of the female physician already 
employed, it being bad policy to appear to undervalue any 
of the profession ; and she, being anxious to go on with her 
remedies, said "she had not given him up yet, but would try 



Chap. XIII. SEKELETU'S LEPROSY. 293 

for another month ; if he was not cured by that time, then 
she would hand him over to the white doctors." But we in- 
tended to leave the country before a month was up ; so Ma- 
mire, with others, induced the old lady to suspend her treat- 
ment for a little. She remained, as the doctors stipulated, in 
the chief's establishment, and on full pay. 

Sekeletu was told plainly that the disease was unknown in 
our country, and was thought exceedingly obstinate of cure ; 
that we did not believe in his being bewitched, and we were 
willing to do all we could to help him. This was a case for 
disinterested benevolence ; no pay was expected, but consid- 
erable risk incurred ; yet we could not decline it, as we had 
the trading in horses. Having, however, none of the medi- 
cines usually employed in skin diseases with us, we tried the 
local application of lunar caustic, and hydriodate of potash 
internally ; and with such gratifying results, that Mamire 
wished the patient to be smeared all over with a solution of 
lunar caustic, which he believed to be of the same nature as 
the blistering fluid formerly applied to his own knee by Mr. 
Oswell. Its power he considered irresistible, and he would 
fain have had any thing like it tried on Sekeletu. 

The disease begins with slight discoloration of the surface, 
and at first affects only the cuticle, the patches spreading in 
the manner, and with somewhat of the appearance, of lichens, 
as if it were a fungus ; small vesicles rise at the outer edges 
of the patches, and a discharge from the vesicles forms scabs. 
The true skin next thickens and rises in nodules, on the fore- 
head, nose, and ears ; and, when the disease is far advanced, 
foul fissures appear on the toes and fingers ; these eventually 
drop off, and sometimes the deformed patient recovers. The 
natives believe it to be hereditary, and non-contagious ; but, 
while working with this case, something very like it was 



294 TEA AND PRESERVED FRUITS. Chap. XIII. 

transplanted to the hands of Drs. Kirk and Livingstone, and 
was cured only by the liberal use of the caustic. The chiefs 
health and spirits became better as the skin became thinner, 
and the deformity of face disappeared. The aged doctress, 
naturally wishing to obtain some credit for the improvement, 
began secretly to superadd her remedies, which consisted of 
scraping the diseased skin, and rubbing it with an astringent 
bark in powder. She desisted on receiving a hint from Ma- 
mire that perhaps the medicine of the white doctors and the 
medicine of the black doctors might not work well together. 

It was a time of great scarcity and hunger, but Sekeletu 
treated us hospitably, preparing tea for us at every visit we 
paid him. With the tea we had excellent American biscuit 
and preserved fruits, which had been brought to him all the 
way from Benguela. The fruits he most relished were those 
preserved in their own juices — plums, apples, pears, straw- 
berries, and peaches, which we have seen only among Portu- 
guese and Spaniards. It made us anxious to plant the fruit- 
tree seeds we had brought, and all were pleased with the 
idea of having these same fruits in their own country. 

Mokele, the head man of Sesheke, and Sebituane's sister, 
Manchunyane, were ordered to. pro vide us with food, as Se- 
keletu's wives, to whom this du.ty properly belonged, were at 
Linyanti. We found a black trader from the West Coast, 
and some Griqua traders from the South, both in search of 
ivory. Ivory is dear at Sesheke ; but cheaper in the Batoka 
country, from Sinamane's to the Kafue, than any where else. 
The trader from Benguela took orders for goods for his next 
year's trip, and offered to bring tea, coffee, and sugar at cent, 
per cent, prices. As, in consequence of a hint formerly giv- 
en, the Makololo had secured all the ivory in the Batoka 
country to the east by purchasing it with hoes, the Benguela 



Chap. XIII. BELIEF IN WITCHCRAFT. 295 

traders found it unprofitable to go thither for slaves. They 
assured us that without ivory the trade in slaves did not pay. 
In this way, and by the orders of Sekeletu, an extensive 
slave-mart was closed. These orders were never infringed 
except secretly. We discovered only two or three cases of 
their infraction. 

Fashion is as despotic in Sesheke and Liny an ti as in Lon- 
don and Paris. The ladies will not wear beads which are 
out of fashion, however pretty they may be. The chief is a 
great horse-fancier, and has invested pretty largely in horse- 
flesh ; but he has been very unlucky, nearly all his horses 
having died soon after being purchased. A party was sent 
last year to Benguela with ivory to purchase five horses, said 
to have been imported from Lisbon ; all the animals died on 
the road, and the grieved drivers brought the five melancholy 
tails, and laid them before the chief. " A native Portuguese 
at Bihe, one of the sleeping-stations, bewitched them ; they 
saw him look at the horses and touch them, and were sure 
that he bewitched them then, for they died soon after I" The 
universal belief in witchcraft, of which we ourselves have but 
recently got rid, is a great barrier to the progress of civiliza- 
tion. Two horses left by the doctor in 1853 had lived in 
spite of hard usage and perpetual hunting ; this was, in the 
native opinion, because he loved the Makololo ; while others, 
from whom they purchased horses, hated them and bewitch- 
ed theii;horses. The treatment the poor beasts received could 
scarcely fail to prove fatal. A jolly set of young men, the 
chief's body - guard, had a rare sort of horse - racing : one 
mounted with neither saddle, bit, nor bridle, and, spreading 
out both arms, dashed off at full speed. When he tumbled 
off, to the great amusement of the by-standers, the servants 
caught the horse and rode off any where, leaving the fallen 



296 NATIVE PRODUCE. Chap. XIII. 

rider to return, rubbing his bruises. The poor horse was kept 
at this work till completely exhausted, each of the guards 
being anxious to show that he could keep on longer than the 
others. This racing, and want of corn and care, would soon 
knock up any steeds they may obtain. The doctor, when in 
Angola, happening to ride the horse of a gentleman at Pun- 
go Andongo, remarked to his companions, "This would do 
for Sekeletu." A party had been sent over a thousand miles 
to purchase it ; but it was now so altered as not to be recog- 
nizable. They had no grain at the time we were there, and 
but a little poor dry grass. 

The native produce cultivated in this, the centre of the 
continent, consists of mapira, or mabele (liolcus sorghum), lo- 
belebele, or meshwera (pennisetum), millet, maize, ground- 
nuts (Arachis hypogcea), underground beans (voandzeia), cu- 
cumbers, melons, pumpkins, mchae, or sweet reed (holcus sac- 
charatum), sweet potatoes, tobacco, cotton, and Indian hemp 
or bang (Cannabis sativa) ; but wheat, rice, and yams they 
have never seen. Sugar-cane, bananas, and cassava grow in 
the Barotse valley. They have no garden vegetables, nor 
any of the fruits found nearer the sea, such as mangoes and 
oranges, which have been introduced into Africa from other 
countries. 

We had ascertained at the Falls the sad fate of the mis- 
sionaries of the London Societ}'. Our friend from Natal, Mr. 
Baldwin, had found them at a well in the desert suffering 
from hunger; they had no horses, without which game there 
can not easily be procured. They had failed to kill the 
rhinoceroses which came to the water at night. Mr. Baldwin 
kindly shot a couple of animals for them, but was apprehen- 
sive, when he left them, that they would hardly live to see 
the Makololo country. They did reach Linyanti, however, 



Chap. XIII. SAD FATE OF THE MISSION. 297 

though, in that exhausted state on which the fever of the 
country is sure to fasten. The severe drought of that year 
had dried up the great marshes around the village, and ren- 
dered fever more than usually virulent. Aware, from Dr. 
Livingstone's description, of the extreme unhealthiness of the 
place, Mr. Helmore, who seems soon to have gained the peo- 
ple's confidence, told the chief that he could not remain in 
that locality, but wished to go on to a higher and more 
healthy part, northeast of the Falls. Sekeletu said that he 
offered to take him to Sesheke to see if he liked that better 
than Linyanti. "You will take me also," said Mr. Helmore, 
"to see Mosi-oa-tunya," the picture of which, in "Missionary 
Travels," was readily recognized ; but, while they were get- 
ting ready for the journey, the wagon-drivers were seized 
with fever; Mrs. Helmore was the first white person who fell 
a victim to the fatal malady. The devoted missionary then 
told the people that, although his wife had died, he did not 
mean to leave them, but would remain and do his duty. 
Notwithstanding the hunger, toil, and exhaustion consequent 
on the long journey through the desert, and this heavy afflic- 
tion at Linyanti, the good man, already knowing the native 
language, at once commenced the work of preaching the Gos- 
pel. We heard some young men at Sesheke sing the hymns 
he had taught them. All liked and spoke kindly of him, and 
his death was generally regretted. It is probable that he 
would soon have exerted a powerful and happy influence 
over the tribe, but in a month he was cut down by fever. 
Our information was derived entirely from the natives of the 
different tribes which now form the Makololo. They are 
generally truthful unless they have some self-interest at stake; 
and they can not be made to combine to propagate any down- 
right falsehood. Taking their statements as probably true, 



298 FATAL EFFECTS OF MALAEIA. Chap. XIII. 

the whole party consisted of twenty -two persons, of whom 
nine were Europeans, and thirteen people of color; of these, 
five Europeans and four natives perished by fever in less 
than three months. The missionary associate of Helmore 
was then left in a somewhat trying position. Four out of the 
nine Europeans had succumbed to the disease, and his own 
wife was lying ill, and soon to be the fifth victim. He had 
been but a short time in Africa ; his knowledge of the na- 
tive language was of course limited, his influence small, and 
he had no experience ; accordingly, he took the wise course 
of leaving the country ; his wife died before he reached the 
healthy desert. The native servants from the south, who had 
never seen the fever in their own country, thought that the 
party had been poisoned by the Makololo; but, although 
they are heathens, and have little regard for human life, they 
are not quite so bad as that. The spear, and not poison, is 
their weapon. There is no occasion for suspecting other poi- 
son than malaria, that being more than enough. We have 
witnessed all the symptoms of this poison scores of times, 
and, from the survivors' description, believe the deaths to 
have been caused by severe African fever, and nothing else. 
We much regretted that, though we were on the same river 
lower down, we were not aware of their being at Linyanti till 
too late to render the medical aid they so much needed. It 
is undoubtedly advisable that every Mission should have a 
medical man as an essential part of its staff. 



Chap. XIV. SEKELETU AND OUR PRESENTS. 299 



CHAPTEK XIV. 

Sekeletu and our Presents. — His Idea of Artillery Practice. — Sebituane's Sis- 
ter's description of the first Appearance of Fever. — The Makololo the most 
intelligent of all the Tribes seen by us. — The Makololo of Old and Young 
Africa. — The Women, their Appearance and Ornaments. — Results of Po- 
lygamy. — Respectability reckoned by the Number of Wives. — Apparent, but 
not real, buying of Wives. — Elegant Amusements of the Ladies. — Matok- 
wane. — Smoking and its Effects. — Novel Use of a Spoon. — Raw Butter. — 
Begging. — The Chief's Perquisites. — The Makololo who had seen the Sea. 
— Justice among the Makololo. — The Rights of Labor. — Religious Instruc- 
tion. — Native Views on Matrimony. — The Chief and the Head Men. — Capi- 
tal Punishment. — An old Warrior. — Ancient Costume of the Makololo. — 
Houses built by the Women. — Amusements of the Children. — Makololo 
Faith in Medicine. — Dr. Livingstone revisits Linyanti. — The Wagon left 
there in 1853 is found in Safe Keeping, with its Contents. — A native Proc- 
lamation. — Burial-place of Mr. Helmore and his Companions. — Faithfulness 
of the Makololo. — Sekeletu's Health improves. — His Esteem for Dr. Kirk. — 
His Desire for an English Settlement on the Batoka Highlands. — Stealing 
Cattle considered no Crime. — Divine Service at Sesheke. — Native Doubts as 
to the Possibility of a Resurrection. 

Sekeletu was well pleased with the various -articles we 
brought for him, and inquired if a ship could not bring his 
sugar-mill and the other goods we had been obliged to leave 
behind at Tette. On hearing that there was a possibility of 
a powerful steamer ascending as far as Sinamane's, but never 
above the Grand Victoria Falls, he asked, with charming sim- 
plicity, if a cannon could not blow away the Falls, so as to 
allow the vessel to come up to Sesheke. 

To save the tribe from breaking up by the continual loss 
of real Makololo, it ought at once to remove to the healthy 
Batoka highlands, near the Kafue. Fully aware of this, Se- 
keletu remarked that all his people, save two, Were convinced, 
that if they remained in the lowlands, a few years would suf- 



300 INTELLIGENCE OF THE MAKOLOLO. Chap. XIV. 

flee to cut off all the real.Makololo; they came originally 
from the healthy South, near the confluence of the Likwa and 
JSTamagari, where fever is almost unknown, and its ravages 
had been as frightful amorlg them here as among Europeans 
on the coast. Sebituane's sister described its first appearance 
among the tribe, after their settling in the Barotse Valley on 
the Zambesi. Many of them were seized with a shivering 
sickness, as if from excessive cold : they had never seen the 
like before. They made great fires, and laid the shivering 
wretches down before them ; but, pile on wood as they might, 
they could not raise heat enough to drive the cold out of the 
bodies of the sufferers, and they shivered on till they died. 
But, though all preferred the highlands, they were afraid to 
go there, lest the Matebele should come and rob them of their 
much-loved cattle. Sebituane, with all his veterans, could 
not withstand that enemy ; and how could they be resisted, 
now that most of the brave warriors were dead ? The young 
men would break, and run away the moment they saw the 
terrible Matebele, being as much afraid of them as the black 
conquered tribes are of the Makololo. "But if the doctor 
and his wife," said the chief and counselors, " would come 
and live with us, we would remove to the highlands at once, 
as Moselekatse would not attack a place where the daughter 
of his friend, Moffat, was living." 

The Makololo are by far the most intelligent and enterpris- 
ing of the tribes we have met. None but brave and daring 
men remained long with Sebituane ; his stern discipline soon 
eradicated cowardice from his army. Death was the inevita- 
ble doom of the coward. If the chief saw a man running 
away from the fight, he rushed after him with amazing speed 
and cut him down, or waited till he returned to the town, and 
then summoned the deserter into his presence. " You did 



Chap. XIV. WOMEN AND THEIR ORNAMENTS. 301 

not wish to die on the field ; you wished to die at home, did 
you? you shall have your wish!" and he was instantly led 
off and executed. The present race of young men are infe- 
rior in most respects to their fathers. The old Makololo had 
many manly virtues ; they were truthful, and never stole, ex- 
cepting in what they considered the honorable way of lifting 
cattle in fair fight ; but this can hardly be said of their sons, 
who, having been brought up among the subjected tribes, 
have acquired some of the vices peculiar to a menial and de- 
graded race. A few of the old Makololo cautioned us not to 
leave any of our property exposed, as the blacks were great 
thieves ; and some of our own men advised us to be on our 
guard, as the Makololo also would steal. A very few trifling 
articles were stolen by a young Makololo, and he, on being 
spoken to on the subject, showed great ingenuity in excusing 
himself by a plausible and untruthful story. The Makololo 
of old were hard workers, and did not consider labor as be- 
neath them ; but their sons never work, regarding it as fit 
only for the Mashona and Makalaka servants. Sebituane, 
seeing that the rival tribes had the advantage over his in 
knowing how to manage canoes, had his warriors taught to 
navigate ; and his own son, with his companions, paddled the 
chief's canoe. All the dishes, baskets, stools, and canoes are 
made by the black tribes called Manyeti and Matlotlora. 
The houses are built by the women and servants. The 
Makololo women are vastly superior to any we have yet seen. 
They are of a light, warm brown complexion, have pleasant 
countenances, and are remarkably quick of apprehension. 
They dress neatly, wearing a kilt and mantle, and have many 
ornaments. Sebituane's sister, the head lady of Sesheke, 
wore eighteen solid brass rings, as thick as one's finger, on 
each leg, and three of copper under each knee ; nineteen brass 



302 RESULTS OF POLYGAMY. Chap. XIV. 

rings on her left arm, and eight of brass and copper on her 
right; also a large ivory ring above each elbow. She had 
a pretty bead necklace, and a bead sash encircled her waist. 
The weight of the bright brass rings round her legs impeded 
her walking and chafed her ankles ; but, as it was the fash- 
ion, she did not mind the inconvenience, and guarded against 
the pain by putting soft rag round the lower rings. 

The practice of polygamy, though intended to increase, 
tends to diminish the tribe. The wealthy old men, who have 
plenty of cattle, marry all the pretty young girls. An ugly 
but rich old fellow, who was so blind that a servant had to 
lead him along the path, had two of the very handsomest 
young wives in the town ; one of them, the daughter of Mo- 
kele, being at least half a century younger than himself, was 
asked, "Do you like him?" "No," she replied; "I hate 
him, he is so disagreeable." The young men of the tribe, 
who happen to have no cattle, must get on without a wife, or 
be content with one who has few personal attractions. This 
state of affairs probably leads to a good deal of immorality, 
and children are few. By pointed inquiries, and laying one's 
self out for that kind of knowledge, one might be able to say 
much more ; but if one behaves as he must do among the 
civilized, and abstains from asking questions, no improper 
hints even will be given by any of the native women we 
have met. 

Polygamy, the sign of low civilization and the source of 
many evils, is common, and, oddly enough, approved of even 
by the women. On hearing that a man in England could 
marry but one wife, several ladies exclaimed that they would 
not like to live in such a country : they could not imagine 
how English ladies could relish our custom ; for, in their way 
of thinking, every man of respectability should have a num- 



Chap. XIV. THE MAKOLOLO LADIES. 303 

ber of wives, as a proof of his wealth. Similar ideas prevail 
all down the Zambesi. No man is respected by his neighbor 
who has not several wives. The reason for this is, doubt- 
less, because, having the produce of each wife's garden, he is 
wealthy in proportion to their number. 

Wives are not bought and sold among the Makololo, 
though the marriage looks like a bargain. The husband, in 
proportion to his wealth, hands over to the father-in-law a cer- 
tain amount of cows, not as purchase-money for the bride, 
but to purchase the right to retain in his own family the chil- 
dren she may have ; otherwise the children would belong to 
the family of the wife's father. A man may have perfect 
control over his wife without this payment, but not of the 
children ; for, as the parents make a sacrifice of a portion of 
the family circle in parting with their daughter, the husband 
must sacrifice some of his property, to heal, as it were, that 
breach. It is not absolute separation, for, when a wife dies, 
the husband gives an ox again, to cause entire severance, or 
make her family "give her up." The Makololo ladies have 
soft, small, delicate hands and feet ; their foreheads are well 
shaped and of good size ; the nose not disagreeably flat, 
though the aim are full; the mouth, chin, teeth, eyes, and 
general form are beautiful, and, contrasted with the West 
Coast negro, quite ladylike. Having maid-servants to wait 
on them and perform the principal part of the household 
work, abundance of leisure time is left them, and they are 
sometimes at a loss to know what to do with it. Unlike their 
fairer and more fortunate sisters in Europe, they have neither 
sewing nor other needle-work, nor piano-forte practice, to oc- 
cupy their fingers, nor reading to improve their minds ; few 
have children to attend to, and time does hang rather heavily 
on their hands. The men wickedly aver that their two great 



304 SMOKING AND ITS EFFECTS. Chap. XIV. 

amusements, or modes for killing time, are sipping beer, and 
secretly smoking bang, or Indian hemp, here known as ma- 
tokwane. Although the men indulge pretty freely in smok- 
ing it, they do not like their wives to follow their example, 
and many of the " monsters" prohibit it. Nevertheless, some 
women do smoke it secretly, and the practice causes a disease 
known by a minute eruption on the skin, quite incurable un- 
less the habit be abandoned. The chief himself ia a slave to 
this deleterious habit, and could hardly be induced to give it 
up, even during the short time he was under medical treat- 
ment. We had ample opportunities for observing the effects 
of this matokwane smoking on our men. It makes them feel 
very strong in body, but it produces exactly the opposite ef- 
fect upon the mind. Two of our finest young men became 
inveterate smokers, and partially idiotic. The performances 
of a group of matokwane smokers are somewhat grotesque : 
they are provided with a calabash of pure water, a split bam- 
boo, five feet long, and the great pipe, which has a large cal- 
abash or kudu's horn chamber to contain the water, through 
which the smoke is drawn, narghille fashion, on its way to 
the mouth. Each smoker takes a few whiffs, the last being 
an extra long one, and hands the pipe to his neighbor. He 
seems to swallow the fumes ; for, striving against the con- 
vulsive action of the muscles of chest and throat, he takes a 
mouthful of water from the calabash, waits a few seconds, 
and then pours water and smoke from his mouth down the 
groove of the bamboo. The smoke causes violent coughing 
in all, and in some a species of frenzy, which passes away in 
a rapid stream of unmeaning words or short sentences, tis, 
"the green grass grows," "the fat cattle thrive," "the fish 
swim." No one in the group pays the slightest attention to 
the vehement eloquence, or the sage or silly utterance of the 



Chap. XIV. RAW BUTTER— BEGGING. 305 

oracle, who stops abruptly, and, the instant common sense re- 
turns, looks rather foolish. 

Our visit to Sesheke broke in upon the monotony of their 
daily life, and we had crowds of visitors, both men and wom- 
en, especially at meal-times, for then they had the double at- 
traction of' seeing white men eat, and of eating with them. 
The men made an odd use of the spoon in supping porridge 
and milk, employing it to convey the food to the palm of the 
left hand, which passed it on to the mouth. We shocked the 
over-refined sensibilities of the ladies by eating butter on our 
bread. " Look at them ! look at them ! they are actually eat- 
ing raw butter — ugh! how nasty!" or, pitying us, a good 
wife would say, "Hand it here to be melted, and then you 
can dip your bread into it decently." They were as much 
disgusted as we should be by seeing an Esquimaux eating 
raw whale's blubber. In their opinion, butter is not fit to be 
eaten until it is cooked or melted. The principal use they 
make of it is to anoint the body, and it keeps the skin smooth 
and glossy. Men and women begged hard for such things 
as they fancied, and were not at all displeased when refused : 
they probably thought there was no harm in asking ; it did 
not hurt us, and cost their glib tongues no effort. Mamire 
asked for a black frock-coat because he admired the color ! 
When told he might have it for a nice new kaross of young 
lechwes' skins, he smiled, and asked no more : a joke usually 
stopped the begging. 

The chief receives the hump and ribs of every ox slaugh- 
tered by his people, and tribute of corn, beer, honey, wild 
fruits, hoes, paddles, and canoes, from the Barotse, Manyeti, 
Matlotlora, and other subject tribes. The principal revenue, 
however, is derived from ivory. All the ivory of the coun- 
try, in theory, belongs to the chief, and the tusks of every el- 

U 



306 THE CHIEFS PEKQUISITES. Chap. XIV. 

ephant killed are placed at his disposal. This game-law at 
first sight seems more stringent than that of the Portuguese 
and of the tribes adjacent to them, where only one tusk be- 
longs to government, and the hunter retains the other. But 
here the chief is expected to be generous, and, as a father 
among his children, to share the proceeds of the ivory with 
his people. They say, " Children require the guidance of 
their fathers, so as not to be cheated by foreigners." This 
reconciles them to the law. The upper classes, too, receive 
the lion's share of the profits from the elephant-hunt without 
undergoing much of the toil and danger; and the subject 
tribes get the flesh, which is all they ever had, and no one 
appears to have any wish to change the established custom. 
Our own men, however, had often discussed the rights of la- 
bor during their travels ; and, having always been paid by us 
for their work, had acquired certain new ideas, which rather 
jostled against this old law. They thought it unjust to be 
compelled to give up both tusks to the chief: bad as the Port- 
uguese were, they were not so oppressive as that ; they allow- 
ed the hunter one of the tusks ; Sekeletu's law was wrong ; 
they wished he would repeal it. This usage doubtless pre- 
serves the elephants, though that is not the object in view. 
Pitsane shot a few on his return from Angola, and then gave 
up hunting altogether. 

Moselekatse, too, claims all the ivory in his country, and 
allows no stranger even to hunt the elephant. A gentleman 
from Natal, ignorant of this prohibition, went with the inten- 
tion of shooting these animals, but was soon taken up and 
carried before the chief. He was kept a prisoner at large for 
three months, and allowed to hunt the buffalo, giraffe, rhi- 
noceros, and antelope as much as he pleased ; but the mo- 
ment he began to follow the tracks of the elephant, his at- 



Chap. XIV. ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 3Q7 

tendants, or keepers, turned his horse's head in the opposite 
direction. 

The Makololo man, Seroke, who had recently returned from 
Benguela with the tails of the poor bewitched horses, called 
on us with some of his companions soon after our arrival. 
They had found out that all the doctor had told them about 
the land being surrounded by the ocean was true. They had 
seen the sea, and the wonders of the sea-shore, and ships, just 
as the Book had said : travelers alone knew any thing, while 
those who knew not the Book, and remained at home, were 
mere children in knowledge. The merchants of Benguela 
had treated them kindly ; and, to encourage trade with the 
Makololo, had given to each one a liberal present of clothing. 
Before coming to visit us they put on all these new clothes, 
and were certainly better dressed than we were ourselves. 
They wore shirts, well washed and starched, coats and trow- 
sers, white socks and patent-leather boots, a red Kilmarnock 
cowl on the head, and a brown wide-awake on the top of 
that. They had a long conversation with our men about the 
wonderful things they had seen, and all agreed that the Ma- 
kololo who tarried at home were mere game, or beasts of the 
field. But their wealthier neighbors, referred to as polokolo, 
or game, were by no means disposed to admit that the travel- 
ers knew more than they did. " They had seen the sea, had 
they, and what is that? Nothing but water; they could see 
plenty of water at home— ay, more than they wanted to see ; 
and white people came to their towns ; why then travel to 
the Coast to look at them?'' 

Justice appears, upon the whole, to be pretty fairly admin- 
istered among the Makololo. A head man took some beads 
and a blanket from one of his men who had been with us ; 
the matter was brought before the chief, and he immediately 



308 MOSHOBOTWANE AND HIS MEN. Chap. XIV. 

ordered the goods to be restored, and decreed, moreover, that 
no head man should take the property of the men who had 
returned. In theory, all the goods. brought back belonged 
to the chief ; the men laid them at his feet, and made a for- 
mal offer of them all ; he looked at the articles, and told the 
men to keep them. This is almost invariably the case. Tuba 
Mokoro, however, fearing lest Sekeletu might take a fancy 
to some of his best goods, exhibited only a few of his old and 
least valuable acquisitions. Masakasa had little to show ; he 
had committed some breach of nativedaw in one of the vil- 
lages on the way, and paid a heavy fine rather than have the 
matter brought to the doctor's ears. Each carrier is entitled 
to a portion of the goods in his bundle, though purchased by 
the chief's ivory, and they never hesitate to claim their rights ; 
but no wages can be demanded from the chief if he fails to 
respond to the first application. 

Our men, accustomed to our ways, thought that the En- 
glish system of paying a man for his labor was the only cor- 
rect one, and some even said it would be better to live under 
a government where life and labor were more secure and 
valuable than here. "While with us they always conduct- 
ed themselves with propriety during Divine service, and not 
only maintained decorum themselves, but insisted on other 
natives who might be present doing the same. When Mo- 
shobotwane, the Batoka chief, came on one occasion with a 
number of his men, they listened in silence to the reading of 
the Bible in the Makololo tongue ; but, as soon as we all 
knelt down to pray, they commenced a vigorous clapping of 
hands, their mode of asking a favor. Our indignant Makolo- 
lo soon silenced their noisy accompaniment, and looked with 
great contempt on this display of ignorance. Nearly all our 
men had learned to repeat the Lord's Prayer and the Apos- 



Chap. XIV. NATIVE VIEWS ON MATRIMONY. 309 

ties' Creed in their own language, and felt rather proud of 
being able to do so ; and when they reached home, they liked 
to recite them to groups of admiring friends. Their ideas of 
right and wrong differ in no respect from our own, except 
in their professed inability to see how it can be improper for 
a man to have more than one wife. A year or two ago sev- 
eral of the wives of those who had been absent with us peti- 
tioned the chief for leave to marry again. They thought that 
it was of no use waiting any longer ; their husbands must be 
dead ; but Sekeletu refused permission ; he himself had bet a 
number of oxen that the doctor would return with their hus- 
bands, and he had promised the absent men that their wives 
should be kept for them. The impatient spouses had there- 
fore to wait a little longer. Some of them, however, eloped 
with other men ; the wife of Mantlanyane, for instance, ran 
off and left his little boy among strangers. Mantlanyane was 
very angry when he heard of it ; not that he cared much 
about her deserting him, for he had two other wives at Tette, 
but he was indignant at her abandoning his boy. 

While we were at Sesheke an ox was killed by a croco- 
dile ; a man found the carcass floating in the river, and ap- 
propriated the meat. When the owner heard of this, he re- 
quested him to come before the chief, as he meant to com- 
plain of him; rather than go, the delinquent settled the mat- 
ter by giving one of his own oxen in lieu of the lost one. A 
head man from near Linyanti came with a complaint that all 
his people had run off, owing to the "hunger." Sekeletu 
said, "You must not be left to grow lean alone; some of 
them must come back to 3^011." He had thus an order to 
compel their return, if he chose to put it in force. Families 
frequently leave their own head man and flee to another vil- 
lage, and sometimes a whole village decamps by night, leav- 



310 A ^ OLD WARRIOR. Chap. XIV. 

ing the head man by himself. Sekeletu rarely interfered with 
the liberty of the subject to choose his own head man, and, as 
it is often the fault of the latter which causes the people to 
depart, it is punishment enough for him to be left alone. 
Flagrant disobedience to the chief's orders is punished with 
death. A Moshubia man was ordered to cut some reeds for 
Sekeletu : he went off and hid himself for two days instead. 
For this he was doomed to die, and was carried in a canoe to 
the middle of the river, choked, and tossed into the stream. 
The spectators hooted the executioners, calling out to them 
that they too would soon be carried out and strangled. Oc- 
casionally, when a man is sent to beat an offender, he tells 
him his object, returns, and assures the chief he has nearly 
killed him. The transgressor then keeps for a while out of 
sight, and the matter is forgotten. The river here teems with 
monstrous crocodiles, and women are frequently, while draw- 
ing water, carried off by these reptiles. 

We met a venerable warrior, sole survivor, probably, of the 
Mantatee host which threatened to invade the colony in 1824. 
He retained a vivid recollection of their encounter with the 
Griquas: "As we looked at the men and horses, puffs of 
smoke arose, and some of us dropped down dead I" " Never 
saw any thing like it in my life ; a man's brains lying in one 
place and his body in another !" They could not understand 
what was killing them ; a ball struck a man's shield at an 
angle; knocked his arm out of joint at the shoulder; and 
leaving a mark, or burn, as he said, on the shield, killed an- 
other man close by. We saw the man with his shoulder 
still dislocated. Sebetuane was present at the fight, and had 
an exalted opinion of the power of white people ever after- 
ward. 

The ancient costume of the Makololo consisted of the skin 



Chap. XIV. CONSTRUCTION OF HUTS. 3H 

of a lamb, kid, jackal, ocelot, or other small animal, worn 
round and below the loins ; and in cold weather a kaross, or 
skin mantle, was thrown over the shoulders. The kaross is 
now laid aside, and the young men of fashion wear a mon- 
key-jacket and a skin round the hips, but no trowsers, waist- 
coat, or shirt. The river and lake tribes are in general very 
cleanly, bathing several times a day. The Makololo women 
use water rather sparingly, rubbing themselves with melted 
butter instead : this keeps off parasites, but gives their clothes 
a ranpid odor. One stage of civilization often leads of neces- 
sity to another — the possession of clothes creates a demand 
for soap ; give a man a needle, and he is soon back to you for 
thread. 

This being a time of mourning on account of the illness of 
the chief, the men were negligent of their persons ; they did 
not cut their hair, or have merry dances, or carry spear and 
shield when they walked abroad. The wife of Pitsane was 
busy making a large hut while we were in the town : she in- 
formed us that the men left house-building entirely to the 
women and servants. A round tower of stakes and reeds, 
nine or ten feet high, is raised and plastered ; a floor is next 
made of soft tufa, or ant-hill material and cowdung. This 
plaster prevents the poisonous insects, called tampans, whose 
bite causes fever in some, and painful sores in all, from har- 
boring in the cracks or soil. The roof, which is much larger 
in diameter than the tower, is made on the ground, and then, 
many persons assisting, lifted up and placed on the tower, 
and thatched. A plastered reed fence is next built up to 
meet the outer part of the roof, which still projects a little 
over this fence, and a space of three feet remains between it 
and the tower. We slept in this space instead of in the tower, 
as the inner door of the hut we occupied was uncomfortably 



812 AMUSEMENTS OF CHILDKEN. Chap. XIV. 

small, being only nineteen inches high, and twenty-two inches 
wide at the floor. A foot from the bottom it measured sev- 
enteen inches in breadth, and close to the top only twelve 
inches, so it was a difficult matter to get through it. The 
tower has no light or ventilation except through this small 
door. The reason a lady assigned for having the doors so 
very small was to keep out the mice ! 

The children have merry times, especially in the cool of 
the evening. One of their games consists of a little girl be- 
ing carried on the shoulders of two others. She sits with 
outstretched arms as they walk about with her, and all the 
rest clap their hands, and, stopping before each hut, sing 
pretty airs, some beating time on their little kilts of cowskin, 
others making a curious humming sound between the songs. 
Excepting this and the skipping-rope, the play of the girls 
consists in imitation of the serious work of their mothers, 
building little huts, making small pots, and cooking, pound- 
ing corn in miniature mortars, or hoeing tiny gardens. The 
boys play with spears of reeds pointed with wood, and small 
shields, or bows and arrows ; or amuse themselves in mak- 
ing little cattle-pens, or in moulding cattle in clay : they 
show great ingenuity in the imitation of various-shaped horns. 
Some, too, are said to use slings, but as soon as they can 
watch the goats or calves, they are sent to the field. We saw 
many boys riding on the calves they had in charge, but this 
is an innovation since the arrival of the English with their 
horses. Tselane, one of the ladies, on observing Dr. Living- 
stone noting observations on the wet and dry bulb thermom- 
eters, thought that he too was engaged in play ; for, on re- 
ceiving no reply to her question, which was rather difficult to 
answer, as the native tongue has no scientific terms, she said, 
with roguish glee, " Poor thing, playing like a little child !" 



Chap. XIV. BELIEF IN "MEDICINES." 313 

Like other Africans, the Makololo have great faith in the 
power of medicine ; they believe that there is an especial med- 
icine for every ill that flesh is heir to. Mamire is anxious to 
have children ; he has six wives, and only one boy, and he 
begs earnestly for " child medicine." The mother of Sekeletu 
came from the Barotse Valley to see her son. Thinks she 
has lost flesh since Dr. Livingstone was here before, and asks 
for " the medicine of fatness." The Makololo consider plump- 
ness an essential part of beauty in women, but the extreme 
stoutness mentioned by Captain Speke in the north would be 
considered hideous here, for the men have been overheard 
speaking of a lady whom we call "inclined to embonpoint" as 
"fat unto ugliness." 

Two packages from the Kuruman, containing letters and 
newspapers, reached Linyanti previous to our arrival, and 
Sekeletu, not knowing when we were coming, left them there, 
but now at once sent a messenger for them. This man re- 
turned on the seventh day, having traveled 240 geographical 
miles. One of the packages was too heavy for him, and he 
left it behind. As the doctor wished to'get some more medi- 
cine and papers out of the wagon left at Linyanti in 1853, he 
decided upon going thither himself. The chief gave him his 
own horse, now about twelve years old, and some men. He 
found every thing in his wagon as safe as when he left it 
seven years before. The head men Mosale and Pekonyane 
received him cordially, and lamented that they had so little 
to offer him. Oh ! had he only arrived the year previous, 
when there was abundance of milk, and corn, and beer ! 

Very early the next morning the old town-crier, Ma-Pulen- 
yane, of his own accord made a public proclamation, which, 
in the perfect stillness of the town long before dawn, was 
striking : "I have dreamed ! I have dreamed ! I have dream- 



314 ARTICLES IN SAFE CUSTODY. Chap. XIV. 

ed! Thou Mosale and thou Pekonyane, my lords, be not 
faint-hearted, nor let your hearts be sore, but believe all the 
words of Monare (the doctor), for his heart is white as milk 
toward the Makololo. I dreamed that he was coming, and 
that the tribe would live, if you prayed to God and gave 
heed to the word of Monare." Ma-Pulenyane showed Dr. 
Livingstone the burying-place where poor Helmore and seven 
others were laid, distinguishing those whom he had put to 
rest, and those for whom Mafale had performed that last of- 
fice. Nothing whatever marked the spot ; and with the na- 
tive idea of hiding the dead, it was said, " It will soon be all 
overgrown with, bushes, for no one will cultivate there." 
None but Ma-Pulenyane approached the place ; the others 
stood at a respectful distance ; they invariably avoid every 
thing connected with death, and no such thing as taking por- 
tions of human bodies to make charms of, as is the custom 
farther north, has ever been known among the Makololo. 

When the wagon was left eight years before, several loose 
articles, as the medicine-chest, magic lantern, tools, and books, 
were given by Sekeletu into the charge of his wives. Every 
thing was now found in safety. The wagon was in sufficient- 
ly good condition for the doctor to sleep in, though the cov- 
ering had partly rotted off; and when the chief was absent 
at the Barotse, the white ants had destroyed one of the wheels. 
Sekeletu's wives, Seipone and Mantu, without being asked, 
cooked abundance of good beef, and baked a large supply of 
little cakes after the pattern which the Makololo, who went to 
Loanda, had brought back to them. With gentle reproaches 
for not bringing Ma-Eobert, or Mrs. Livingstone, they re- 
peated some of the prattle of her children in Sechuana, and 
said, " Are we never more to know any thing of them but 
their names?" These little points are noticed with feelings 



Chap. XIV. FAITHFULNESS OF THE MAKOLOLO. 315 

of gratitude for abundant and unvarying kindness on numer- 
ous occasions during many years. But no man in his senses 
would suppose that the confidence which inspired these kind 
expressions would be imparted at sight to any novice. It 
ought never to be forgotten that influence among the heathen 
can be acquired only by a patient continuance in well-doing, 
and that good manners are as necessary among barbarians, as 
among the civilized. 

Among the articles put into the hands of Sekeletu's wives 
for greater security were two manuscript volumes of notes, 
which, on starting in 1853 from the interior to the West 
Coast, Dr. Livingstone wished, in the event of his never re- 
turning from that hazardous journey, to be transmitted to his 
family. A letter was left with them, addressed to any En- 
glish traveler or trader, and expressing a desire that the vol- 
umes might be handed to Mr. Moffat. One contained notes 
on the discovery of Lake Ngami, and on the Kalahari Desert ; 
the other, notes on its natural history. The Makololo, who 
had guarded all the rest of the property most faithfully, de- 
clared that they had delivered the books to one of the only 
two traders who had visited them. When they were now 
told that the person in question denied their reception, Sei- 
pone, one of Sekeletu's wives, said, "He lies; I gave them 
to him myself." Conscience seems to have worked; for the 
trader, having gone to Moselekatse's country, one of tke*vol- 
umes was put into the mail-bag coming from the south, which 
came to hand with the lock taken off in quite a scientific 
manner. 

Taking a supply of the medicine, which had been lying 
only a hundred yards from the spot where the missionaries 
helplessly perished, the doctor returned toward Sesheke. The 
journey took three days each way. The path leads through 



316 SEKELETU'S HEALTH IMPROVED. Chap. XIV. 

a district infested by tsetse ; to preserve the horses from be- 
ing bitten, this was passed through by night. • The party slept 
at the different Makololo cattle-stations. At one a lion had 
been killed by a serpent. We have often heard of animals 
being so killed ; but in a twenty-two years' residence in the 
country, Dr. Livingstone has only met with one case in which 
the bite was fatal to a human being. Ipecacuanha mixed with 
ammonia, and rubbed into the wound, is much esteemed in 
India. A key, pressed on the puncture for some time, ex- 
tracts the poison ; and when ipecacuanha is not at hand, a 
little powder ignited on the spot will do instead. Very large 
herds of kualatas were seen on the plains, and many black 
bucks, though their habitat is generally on the hills.* 

Sekeletu's health improved greatly during our visit ; the 
melancholy foreboding left his spirits, and he became cheer- 
ful, but resolutely refused to leave his den, and appear in pub- 
lic till he was perfectly cured, and had regained what he con- 
sidered his good looks. He also feared lest some of those 
who had bewitched him originally might still be among the 
people, and neutralize our remedies.f 

* A female kualata (Axgoceros equina) shot here measured — 

Ft. in. | Ft, in. 

At withers 4 8 i Length of horn 2 2 

Entire length 6 3 I Half circumference at chest 2 8 

These measurements may be interesting to those who try to acclimatize ani- 
mals. The elands in England are small. One we measured in Africa in 1849 
was s* feet four inches at the withers, and it seemed an animal of only ordi- 
nary size. Its power of taking on fat, and the quantity of fluid found in its 
stomach in the driest season, are quite remarkable. It browses chiefly on the 
leaves of trees. 

f It was with sorrow that we learned by a letter from Mr. Moffat, in 1864, 
that poor Sekeletu was dead. As will be mentioned farther on, men were sent 
with us to bring up more medicine. They preferred to remain on the Shire, 
and, as they were free men, we could do no more than try and persuade them 
to hasten back to their chief with iodine and other remedies. They took the 
parcel, but there being only two real Makololo among them, these could nei- 
ther return themselves alone nor force their attendants to leave a part of the 



Chap. XIV. SEKELETU'S ESTEEM FOR DR. KIRK. 317 

As we expected another steamer to be at Kongone in No- 
vember, it was impossible for us to remain in Sesheke more 
than one month. Before our departure, the chief and his 
principal men expressed in a formal manner their great de- 
sire to have English people settled on the Batoka highlands. 
At one time he proposed to go as far as Phori in order to se- 
lect a place of residence ; but, as he afterward saw reasons 
for remaining where he was till his cure was completed, he 
gave orders to those sent with us, in the event of our getting, 
on our return, past the rapids near Tette, not to bring us to 
Sesheke, but to send forward a messenger, and he, with the 
whole tribe, would come to us. Dr. Kirk being of the same 
age, Sekeletu was particularly anxious that he should come 
and live with him. He said he would cut off a section of the 
country for the special use of the English ; and on being told 
that in all probability their descendants would cause disturb- 
ance in his country, he replied, " These would be only domes- 
tic feuds, and of no importance." The great extent of uncul- 
tivated land on the cool and now unpeopled highlands has 
but to. be seen to convince the spectator how much room there 
is, and to spare, for a vastly greater population than ever, in 
our day, can be congregated there. 

The agricultural tribes are more peaceful than the pastoral. 
The Makololo are both pastoral and agricultural, and their 
love for lifting cattle often leads them to great distances. 
This marauding, if sanctioned by the chief, is not considered 
dishonest or dishonorable, for they laugh if they are charged 
with cattle-stealing, and assert that they have lifted them only. 
As, in the tribes nearer the Coast, slave-trading is the gigan- 

country where they were independent, and could support themselves with ease. 
Sekeletu, however, lived long enough to receive and acknowledge goods to the 
value of £50, sent, in lieu of those which remained in Tette, by Robert Moffat, 
jun., since dead. 



318 A MORAL LESSON. Chap. XIV. 

tic evil which must be grappled with, if any good is to be 
done, so here it was necessary frequently, yet in a kindly 
way, to point out the evils of marauding. A wagon with 
Mr. Helmore's name on *it being in the chief's possession, a 
doubt was expressed whether the person said to have given 
it had any power to dispose of the property of the orphan 
children; and Sekeletu was told that, should Mr. Moffat, in 
answer to a letter, say that the doubt had weight, the wagon 
ought to be paid for in ivory : this the chief readily agreed 
to ; and had it been possible for one with the wisdom, expe- 
rience, and conciliating manners of Mr. Moffat to have visited 
the Makololo, he would have found them easily influenced to 
fairness, and not at all the unreasonable savages they were 
represented to be. Unquestionably a great amount of good- 
ness exists in the midst of all their evil, and we know of no 
more desirable field for an active and sensible missionary. 

In trying to benefit them, it was often pointed out that the 
necessary consequence of these lawless forays, such as that 
they had made the year before against a tribe of Damaras to 
the west, was to produce a lawless state at home. They did 
not relish the idea of the reflected action on themselves, nor 
did they like being plainly told that those who shed the blood 
of other tribes, and then returned to kill each other at home 
on charges of witchcraft, were the only real sorcerers ; that 
murdering the children of the same Great Father, for the sake 
of cattle which did not belong to them, entailed guilt in His 
sight ; that those who gave no peace to others could hope 
from the Supreme Ruler for none among themselves. It 
all seemed reasonable and true; they would not dispute it; 
" They needed the Book of God. But the hearts of black 
men are not the same as those of the whites. They had real 
sorcerers among them. If that was guilt which custom led 



Chap. XIV. DIVINE SERVICE AT SESHEKE. 319 

them to do, it lay between the white man and Jesus, who had 
not given them the Book, nor favored them as He had the 
whites." None ever attempted to justify the shedding of 
human blood; but some, in reference to cattle -lifting, said, 
" Why should these Makalaka" — a term of contempt for all 
the blacker tribes — "possess cattle if they can not fight for 
them?" Ma-Sekeletu asserted that it was Moselekatse who 
had made the Makololo covetous, or yellow-hearted, peluiset- 
la. He had taken their cattle, and subsequent hunger had 
made them greedy of the oxen of other tribes. She being 
the chief's mother, we may imagine what his education on 
the maternal side has been. They often try to make peace, 
notwithstanding, among themselves. Two men were wran- 
gling and cursing each other one day, when Moikele, a Ma- 
kololo man, rose, and, to prevent mischief, quietly took their 
spears from the corner in which they stood, and, sitting down 
beside Dr. Livingstone, remarked, "It is the nature of bulls 
to gore each other." This is probably the idea that lies at 
the bottom of Muscular Heathenism, if not of Muscular Chris- 
tianity. 

On the last occasion of our holding Divine service at Se- 
sheke, the men were invited to converse on the subject on 
which they had been addressed. So many of them had died 
since we were here before, that not much probability existed 
of our all meeting again, and this had naturally led to the sub- 
ject of a future state. They replied that they did not wish 
to offend the speaker, but they could not believe that all the 
dead would rise again: "Can those who have been killed in 
the field and devoured by the vultures ; or those who have 
been eaten by the hyenas or lions ; or those who have been 
tossed into the river, and eaten by more than one crocodile 
—can they all be raised again to life ?" They were told that 



320 CLEAR REASONING. Chap. XIV. 

men could take a leaden bullet, change it into a salt (acetate 
of lead), which could be dissolved as completely in water as 
our bodies in the stomachs of animals, and then reconvert it 
into lead ; or that the bullet could be transformed into the 
red and white paint of our wagons, and again be reconvert- 
ed into the original lead ; and that, if men exactly like them- 
selves could do so much, how much more could He do who 
had made the eye to see, and the ear to hear! We added, 
however, that we believed in a resurrection, not because we 
understood how it would be brought about, but because our 
heavenly Father assured us of it in His Book. The refer- 
ence to the truth of the Book and its Author seems always 
to have more influence on the native mind than the clever- 
ness of the illustration. The knowledge of the people is 
scanty, but their reasoning is generally clear as far as their 
information goes. 



Chap. XV. LESHORE AND HIS MEN. 321 



CHAPTER XV. 

Departure from Sesheke on the 17th of September, I860.— Convoyed by Pit- 
sane and Leshore. — Embassy to Sinamane. — Leshore and his Crew. — Mo- 
bita and the Canoe-men. — Zambesi Fish, Ngwesi and Konokono. — Fish-bone 
Medicine. — Renew the Garden at Mosi-oa-tunya. — Kalunda and Moamba 
Falls. — Native desire of Pleasing. — Hospitality of the Batoka. — Native 
Fruits. — Valuable oil-yielding Tree. — Indian Trees in the centre of Africa. 
— Golongwe. — Great Heat. — Corns on the Feet not peculiar to the Civil- 
ized. — River Longkwe. — Gipsy Bellows in Africa.- — Tin. — Chilombe Islet. 
— Native Dress. — Sinamane and his Long Spears. 

We left Sesheke on the 17th of September, 1860, convoyed 
by Pitsane and Leshore with their men. Pitsane was order- 
ed by Sekeletu to make a hedge round the garden at the 
Falls, to protect the seeds we had brought, and also to col- 
lect some of the tobacco tribute below the Falls. Leshore, 
besides acting as a sort of guard of honor to us, was sent on 
a diplomatic mission to Sinamane. No tribute was exacted 
by Sekeletu from Sinamane ; but, as he had sent in his adhe- 
sion, he was expected to act as a guard in case of the Mate- 
bele wishing to cross and attack the Makololo. As we in- 
tended to purchase canoes of Sinamane in which to descend 
the river, Leshore was to commend us to whatever help this 
Batoka chief could render. It must be confessed that Le- 
shore's men, who were all of the black subject tribes, really 
needed to be viewed by us in the most charitable light : for 
Leshore, on entering any village, called out to the inhabit- 
ants,' "Look out for your property, and see that my thieves 
don't steal it." 

Two young Makololo, with their Batoka servants, accom- 
panied us to see if Kebrabasa could be surmounted, and to 

X 



322 MOBITA AND HIS CANOE-MEN. Chap. XV. 

bring a supply of medicine for Sekeletu's leprosy ; and half 
a dozen able canoe-men, under Mobita, who had previously 
gone with Dr. Livingstone to Loanda, were sent to help us in 
our river navigation. Some men on foot drove six oxen 
which Sekeletu had given us as provisions for the journey. 
It was, as before remarked, a time of scarcity ; and, consid- 
ering the dearth of food, our treatment had been liberal. 

By day the canoe-men are accustomed to keep close under 
the river's bank from fear of the hippopotami ; by night, 
however, they keep in the middle of the stream, as then those 
animals are usually close to the bank on their way to their 
grazing - grounds. Our progress was considerably impeded 
by the high winds, which at this season of the year begin 
about eight in the .morning, and blow strongly up the river 
all day. The canoes were poor leaky affairs, and so low in 
parts of the gunwale that the paddlers were afraid to follow 
the channel when it crossed the river, lest the waves might 
swamp us. A rough sea is dreaded by all these inland ca- 
noe-men ; but, though timid, they are by no means unskillful 
at their work. The ocean rather astonished them afterward, 
and also the admirable way that the Nyassa men managed 
their canoes on a rough lake, and even among the breakers, 
where' no small boat could possibly live. 

On the night of the 17th we slept on the left bank of the 
Majeele, after having had all the men ferried across. An ox 
was slaughtered, and not an ounce of it was left next morn- 
ing. Our two young Makololo companions, Moloka and Ea- 
makukane, having never traveled before, naturally clung to 
some of the luxuries they had been accustomed to at home. 
When they lay down to sleep, their servants were called to 
spread their blankets over their august persons, not forget- 
ting their feet. This seems to be the duty of the Makololo 



Chap. XV. A KA VENOUS FISH. 323 

wife to her husband, and strangers sometimes receive the 
honor. One of our party, having wandered, slept at the vil- 
lage of Nambowe. When he laid down, to his surprise two 
of Nambowe's wives came at once, and carefully and kindly 
spread his kaross over him. 

A beautiful silvery fish with reddish fins, called Ngwesi, 
is very abundant in the river. Large ones weigh fifteen or 
twenty pounds each. Its teeth are exposed, and so arranged 
that, when they meet, the edges cut a hook like nippers. 
The Ngwesi seems to be a very ravenous fish. It often gulps 
down the Konokono, a fish armed with serrated bones more 
than an inch in length in the pectoral and dorsal fins, which, 
fitting into a notch at the roots, can be put by the fish on full 
cock or straight out — they can not be folded down without 
its will, and even break in resisting. The name " Konoko- 
no," elbow-elbow, is given it, from a resemblance its extend- 
ed fins are supposed to bear to a man's elbow stuck out from 
his body. It often performs the little trick of cocking its fins 
in the stomach of the Ngwesi, and, the elbows piercing its en- 
emy's sides, he is frequently found floating dead. The fin 
bones seem to have an acrid secretion on them, for the wound 
they make is excessively painful. The Konokono barks dis- 
tinctly when landed with the hook. Our canoe-men invari- 
ably picked up every dead fish they saw on the surface of the 
water, however far gone. An unfragrant odor was no objec- 
tion ; the fish was boiled and eaten, and the water drunk as 
soup. It is a curious fact that many of the Africans keep 
fish as we do woodcocks, until they are extremely offensive, 
before they consider them fit to eat. Our paddlers informed 
us on our way down that iguanas lay their eggs in July and 
August, and crocodiles in September. The eggs remain a 
month or two under the sand where they are laid, and the 



324 FISH-BONE MEDICINE. Chap. XV. 

young come out when the rains have fairly commenced. The 
canoe-men were quite positive that crocodiles frequently stun 
men by striking them with their tails, and then squat on them 
till they are drowned. We once caught a young crocodile, 
which certainly did use its tail to inflict sharp blows, and led 
us to conclude that the native opinion is correct. They be- 
lieved also that, if a person shuts the beast's eyes, it lets go 
its hold. Crocodiles have been known to unite and kill a 
large one of their own species and eat it.* Some fishermen 
throw the bones of the fish into the river, but in most of the 
fishing villages there are heaps of them in various places. 
The villagers can walk over them without getting them into 
their feet ; but the Makololo, from having softer soles, are un- 
able to do so. The explanation offered was, that the fisher- 
men have a medicine against fish-bones, but that they will 
not reveal it to the Makololo. 

We spent a night on Mparira Island, which is four miles 
long and about one mile broad. Mokompa, the head man, 
was away hunting elephants. His wife sent for him on our 
arrival, and he returned next morning before we left. Tak- 
ing advantage of the long-continued drought, he had set fire 
to the reeds between the Chobe and Zambesi in such a man- 
ner as to drive the game out at one corner, where his men 
laid in wait with their spears. He had killed five elephants 
and three buffaloes, wounding several others which escaped. 

. On our land party coming up, we were told that the oxen 

* A greater variety of fishes are on the same authority found above than be- 
low the Falls. Of those above they name : Mpofu — Mo — Nijnje — Ngwesi — 
Moshona — Nembwe — Seeo Lobotu — Lobangwa — Motome — Nembele — Litore 
— Leshuala or Ndombe — Linyonga — Mpala — Jorungo — Likeya — Moshiba — 
Bundo — Seto — Minga — Lisinje. 

In addition to these, say twenty fishes, they mention Mumbo, called also by 
the Bashubia Mohumbwe, which seems to be a kind of sawfish, and Likala, or 
fiala, the Lepidosiren in the Barotse Valley. 



Chap. XV. GARDEN AT MOSI-OA-TUNYA. 325 

were bitten by the tsetse : they could see a great difference 
in their looks. One was already eaten, and they now wished 
to slaughter another. A third fell into a buffalo-pit next day, 
so our stock was soon reduced. A man who accompanied 
us to the Falls was a great admirer of the ladies. Every 
pretty girl he saw filled his heart with rapture. " Oh, what 
a beauty ! never saw her like before ; I wonder if she is mar- 
ried?" and earnestly and lovingly did he gaze after the 
charming one till she had passed out of sight. He had four 
wives at home, and hoped to have a number more before 
long, but he had only one child ; this Mormonism does not 
seem to satisfy ; it leads to a state of mind which, if not dis- 
ease, is truly contemptible. The Batoka chief Moshobotwane 
again treated us with his usual hospitality, giving us an ox, 
some meal, and milk. We took another view of the grand 
Mosi-oa-tunya, and planted a quantity of seeds in the garden 
on the island ; but, as no one will renew the hedge, the hip- 
popotami will, doubtless, soon destroy what we planted. Ma- 
shotlane assisted us. So much power was allowed to this 
under-chief, that he appeared as if he had cast off the author- 
ity of Sekeletu altogether. He did not show much courtesy 
to his messengers ; instead of giving them food, as is custom- 
ary, he took the meat out of a pot in their presence, and hand- 
ed it to his own followers. This may have been because Se- 
keletu's men bore an order to him to remove to Linyanti. 
He had not only insulted Baldwin, but had also driven away 
the Griqua traders ; but this may all end in nothing. Some 
of the natives here and at Sesheke know a few of the low 
tricks of more civilized traders. A pot of milk was brought 
to us one evening which was more indebted to the Zambesi 
than to any cow. Baskets of fine-looking white meal, else- 
where, had occasionally the lower half filled with bran. Eggs 



326 KALUNDA AND MOAMBA FALLS. Chap. XV. 

are always a perilous investment. The native idea of a good 
egg differs as widely from our own as is possible on such a 
trifling subject. An egg is eaten here with apparent relish, 
though an embryo chick be inside. 

We left Mosi-oa-tunya on the 27th, and slept close to the 
village of Bakwini. It is built on a ridge of loose red soil, 
which produces great crops of mapira and ground-nuts ; many 
magnificent mosibe-trees stand near the village. Machimisi, 
the head man of the village, possesses a herd of cattle and a 
large heart ; he kept us company for a couple of days to guide 
us on our way. 

We had heard a good deal of a strong-hold some miles be- 
low the Falls, called Kalunda. Our return path was much 
nearer the Zambesi than that of our ascent — in fact, as near 
as the rough country would allow — but we left it twice be- 
fore we reached Sinamane's, in order to see Kalunda and a 
fall called Moomba, or Moamba. The Makololo had once 
dispossessed the Batoka of Kalunda, but we could not see the 
fissure, or whatever it is, that rendered it a place of security, 
as it was on the southern bank. The crack of the Great Falls 
was here continued : the rocks are the same as farther up, 
but perhaps less weather-worn — and now partially stratified 
in great thick masses. The country through which we were 
traveling was covered with a cindery-looking volcanic tufa, 
and might be called " Katakaumena." 

The description we received of the Moamba Falls seemed 
to promise something grand. They were said to send up 
" smoke" in the wet season like Mosi-oa-tunya ; but when we 
looked down into the cleft, in which the dark green narrow 
river still rolls, we saw, about 800 or 1000 feet below us, what, 
after Mosi-oa-tunya, seemed two insignificant cataracts. It 
was evident that Pitsane, observing our delight at the Yictoria 



Chap. XV. NATIVE DESIRE TO PLEASE. 327 

Falls, wished to increase our pleasure by a second wonder. 
One Mosi-oa-tunya, however, is quite enough for a continent. 

The natives of Africa have an amiable desire to please, and 
often tell what they imagine will be gratifying, rather than 
the uninteresting naked truth. Let a native from the in- 
terior be questioned by a thirsty geographer whether the 
mountains round his youthful home are high ; from a dim 
recollection of something of the sort, combined with a desire 
to please, the answer will be in the affirmative. And so it 
will be if the subject of inquiry be gold or unicorns, or men 
with tails. English sportsmen, though first-rate shots at 
home, are notorious for the number of their misses on first 
trying to shoot in Africa. Every thing is on such a large 
scale, and there is such a glare of bright sunlight, that some 
time is required to enable them to judge of distances. "Is 
it wounded ?" inquired a gentleman of his dark attendant, 
after firing at an antelope. "Yes; the ball went right into 
his heart." These mortal wounds never proving fatal, he 
asked a friend, who understood the language, to explain to 
the man that he preferred the truth in every case. "He is 
my father," replied the native, " and I thought he would be 
displeased if I told him that he never hits at all." But, great 
as this failing is among the free, it is much more annoying 
among the slaves. One can scarcely induce a slave to trans- 
late any thing truly, he is so intent on thinking of what will 
please. By far the greatest wonder of Captain Speke and 
Grant's journey was that they accomplished it with slaves. 

We had now an opportunity of seeing more of the Batoka 
than we had on the highland route to our north. They did 
not wait till the evening before offering food to the strangers. 
The aged wife of the head man of a hamlet where we rested 
at midday at once kindled a fire, and put on the cooking-pot 



328 COLOE NOT A MATTER OF EACE. Chap. XV. 

to make porridge. Both men and women are to be distin- 
guished by greater roundness of feature than the other na- 
tives, and the custom of knocking out the upper front teeth 
gives at once a distinctive character to the face. Their color 
attests the greater altitude of the country in which many of 
them formerly lived. Some, however, are as dark as the 
Bashubia and Barotse of the great valley to their west, in 
which stands Sesheke, formerly the capital of the Balui, or 
Bashubia. 

The assertion may seem strange, yet it is none the less true, 
that in all the tribes we have visited we never saw a really 
black person. Different shades of brown prevail, and often 
with a bright bronze tint, which no painter, except Mr. An- 
gus, seems able to catch. Those who inhabit elevated, dry 
situations, and who are not obliged to work much in the sun, 
are frequently of a light warm brown, " dark but comely." 
Darkness of color is probably partly caused by the sun, and 
partly by something in the climate or soil which we do not 
yet know. We see something of the same sort in trout and 
other fish, which take their color from the ponds or streams 
in which they live. The members of our party were much 
less embrowned by free exposure to the sun for years than 
Dr. Livingstone and his family were by passing once from 
Kuruman to Cape Town, a journey which occupied only a 
couple of months. 

What the peculiarity of climate is which favors the depo- 
sition of coloring matter in the skin and hair is yet unknown ; 
but, in some cases observed, color was not a matter of race, 
for, after long residence in a hot country, a wound or boil 
heals much darker than the rest of the body. The hair of the 
Africans, microscopists inform us, is not really wool, but a 
growth of identically the same nature as our own, only with 



Chap. XV. WANT OF THE SABBATH. 329 

a greater amount of the pigment deposited. It is not at all 
unusual to meet Europeans with hair darker than the Afri- 
can, and with Africans whose hair has a distinct reddish tinge, 
and who have the same nervo-sanguineous temperament as 
the Xanthous varieties of other races. 

But few good-looking women appear in the first Batoka 
villages, because the Makololo marry all the pretty girls. In 
one village we saw on a pole the head of a crocodile. It had 
entered by night the inclosure constructed to protect the wom- 
en when drawing water, and caught one of them : the men 
rushed to the rescue, killed the monster, and stuck his head 
on a pole, as they were wont to do the heads of human crim- 
inals and of strangers. 

A strong clannish feeling exists among the Batoka, as 
among all the other tribes. In traveling, those belonging to 
one tribe always keep by themselves and help one another. 
The Batoka, like the Bushmen, excel in following the track 
of a wounded animal ; it is part of their education. They 
are also good climbers, from being accustomed to collect wild 
fruits. 

We passed over a rugged country, with many hills and 
perennial streams, of which the Sindi was the finest for irri- 
gation. On returning from Moamba to the Sindi we found 
our luggage had gone on, and, as the chronometer was with 
it, we had to follow it up on Sunday ; we all felt sorely the 
want of the Sabbath through the following week. Apart from 
any Divine command, a periodical day of repose is absolutely 
necessary for the human frame. 

We encamped on the Kalomo on the 1st of October, and 
found the weather very much warmer than when we crossed 
this stream in August. At 3 P.M., the thermometer, four feet 
from the ground, was 101° in the shade ; the wet bulb only 



330 TWO BUFFALOES SHOT. Chap. XV. 

61° : a difference of 40°. Yet, notwithstanding this extreme 
dryness of the atmosphere, without a drop of rain having 
fallen for months, and scarcely any dew, many of the shrubs 
and trees were putting forth fresh leaves of various hues, 
while others made a profuse display of lovely blossoms. 
Near the sites of ruined Batoka villages are always seen the 
Mochenje Milo, Boma, Mosibe, Motsintsela, and several other 
kinds of native fruits ; Dr. Kirk found the Mamosho-mosho 
and Milo to be Cinchonaceous trees. The Mosibe he consid- 
ered identical with capaifera hymencefolia of Cuba, a tree of 
which but little is yet known. As this tree is absent from 
the eastern and western slopes of the continent of Africa, and 
not met with on the East Coast, our finding it in this remote 
part, with other trees showing a relationship to India, is very 
interesting, as indicating that much is unknown in the mi- 
grations of plants. The Boma is a Yitex nearly allied to a 
Madagascar tree. It yields a very valuable oil-nut, and grows 
abundantly at Lake Nyassa, as well as in these quarters. 
The Mamosho-mosho is the best fruit in the country; but 
we, being glad of any fruit, are unable to say whether Euro- 
peans in general would esteem it as highly as the natives 
do. The edible part of uncultivated fruits is usually very 
small. One of our men speared a conger eel four feet seven 
inches in length, and ten and a half inches round the neck ; 
it is here called Mokonga. 

Two old and very savage buffaloes were shot for our com- 
panions on the 3d of October. Our Volunteers may feel an 
interest in knowing that balls sometimes have but little ef- 
fect: one buffalo fell on receiving a Jacob's shell; it was hit 
again twice, and lost a large amount of blood ; and yet it 
sprang up and charged a native, who, by great agility, had 
just time to climb a tree before the maddened beast struck it, 



Chap. XV. GREAT HEAT EXPERIENCED. 331 

battering-ram fashion, hard enough, almost to have split both 
head and tree. It paused a few seconds — drew back several 
paces — glared up at the man, and then dashed at the tree 
again and again, as if determined to shake him out of it. It 
took two more Jacob's shells and five other large solid rifle 
balls to finish the beast at last. These old surly buffaloes 
had been wandering about in a sort of miserable fellowship ; 
their skins were diseased and scabby, as if leprous, and their 
horns atrophied or worn down to stumps — the first was killed 
outright by one Jacob's shell, the second died hard. There 
is so much difference in the tenacity of life in wounded ani- 
mals of the same species, that the inquiry is suggested where 
the seat of life can be ? We have seen a buffalo live long 
enough, after a large bullet had passed right through the 
heart, to allow firm adherent clots to be formed in the two 
holes. 

One day's journey above Sinamane's, a mass of mountain 
called Gorongue, or Golongwe, is said to cross the river, and 
the rent through which the river passes is, by native report, 
quite fearful to behold. The country round it is so rocky, 
that our companions dreaded the fatigue and were not much 
to blame, if, as is probably the case, the way be worse than 
that over which we traveled. As we trudged along over the 
black slag-like rocks, the almost leafless trees affording no 
shade, the heat was quite as great as Europeans could bear. 
It was 102° in the shade, and a thermometer plaeed under 
the tongue or armpit showed that our blood was 99*5°, or 
1*5° hotter than that of the natives, which stood at 98°. Our 
shoes, however, enable us to pass over the hot burning soil 
better than they can. Many of those who wear sandals have 
corns on the sides of the feet and on the heels, where the 
straps pass. We have seen instances, too, where neither san- 



332 THE LONGKWE— BLACKSMITH'S BELLOWS. Chap. XV. 

dais nor shoes were worn, of corns on the soles of the feet 
It is, moreover, not at all uncommon to see toes cocked up, 
as if pressed out of their proper places ; at home, we should 
have unhesitatingly ascribed this to the vicious fashions per- 
versely followed by our shoemakers. 

The Longkwe, or, as the Makololo call it, the Eiver of 
Quai, or tobacco, comes in from the country of Moselekatse, 
or from the southeast, and joins the Zambesi above Glolong- 
we. This fact may corroborate what is said by Mr. Thomas, 
that all the rivers rising on the one side of Moselekatse's 
country run easterly, and into the Shashe, to join the Limpo- 
po, while all the others run westerly, and then northerly, to 
the Zambesi. Grolongwe was probably the dam which, be- 
fore the rent was made, converted the whole Linyanti Yalley 
into a lake ; but we could not, on the path we came, observe 
any difference of level by the barometer. From the Falls to 
Sinamane's the country sloped, and was all lower than Se- 
sheke ; still a considerable difference of level must have taken 
place since the deep undisturbed mass of soft tufa was depos- 
ited on the great flats of Sesheke and Linyanti. The courses 
of the rivers in the country of Moselekatse, and on the Bato- 
ka highlands west of the Kalomo, show that, in reference to 
the countries east of it, the great Makololo Yalley is still a 
hollow. 

On the 5th, after crossing some hills, we rested at the vil- 
lage of Simariango. The bellows of the blacksmith here 
were somewhat different from the common goatskin bags, 
and more like those seen in Madagascar. They consisted of 
two wooden vessels, like a lady's bandbox of small dimen- 
sions, the upper ends of which were covered with leather, 
and looked something like the heads of drums, except that 
the leather bagged in the centre. They were fitted with long 



Chap. XV. 



TIN— CHILOMBE ISLET. 



333 




Bellows and other Tools. 



nozzles, through which the air was driven by working the 
loose covering of the tops up and down by means of a small 
piece of wood attached to their centres. The blacksmith said 
that tin was obtained from a people in the north called Ma- 
rendi, and that he had made it into bracelets ; we had never 
heard before of tin being found in the country. 

Our course then lay down the bed of a rivulet called Ma- 
patizia, in which there was much calc spar, with calcareous 
schist, and then the Tette gray sandstone, which usually over- 
lies coal. On the 6th we arrived. at the islet Chilombe, be- 
longing to Sinamane, where the Zambesi runs broad and 
smooth again, and were well received by Sinamane himself. 
Never was Sunday more welcome to the weary than this, the 
last we were to spend with our convoy. 

Sinamane is an active-looking man of a light complexion, 
and is the ablest and most energetic of the Batoka chiefs we 
have met. He was independent until lately, when he sent in 
his adhesion to Linyanti ; and, as all that Sekeletu asks of 
him is not to furnish the Matebele with canoes when they 



334 NATIVE DRESS. Chap. XV. 

wish to cross the Zambesi to attack the Makololo, he will 
probably continue loyal. Leshore's mission, as we have said, 
was to ratify this vassal-ship, to request Sinamane to furnish 
us with what canoes he could, and to assure him that Mosho- 
botwane had not received, and never would receive, authority 
from Sekeletu to go on forays among his countrymen. This 
message was communicated also to the offending Batoka at 
the Falls, with whom it would have a good effect. We now 
saw many good-looking young men and women. The dresses 
of the ladies are identical with those of Nubian women in 
Upper Egypt. To a belt on the waist a great number of 
strings are attached, to hang all round the person. These 
fringes are about six or eight inches 
long. The matrons wear in addition 
a skin cut like the tails of the coatee 
formerly worn by our dragoons. The 
younger girls wear the waist-belt ex- 
hibited in the wood-cut, ornamented 
with shells, and have the fringes only 
in front. Marauding parties of Batoka, calling themselves 
Makololo, have for some time had a wholesome dread of Sina- 
mane's "long spears." Before going to Tette, our Batoka 
friend, Masakasa, was one of a party that came to steal some 
of the young women ; but Sinamane, to their utter astonish- 
ment, attacked them so furiously that the survivors barely 
escaped with their lives. Masakasa had to flee so fast that he 
threw away his shield, his spear, and his clothes, and returned 
home a wiser and a sadder man. 




Chap. XVI. SINAMANE'S PEOPLE. 335 



CHAPTEE XVI. 

Sinamane. — Canoe Navigation. — Moemba. — Water-drawing Stockades. — Gen- 
erosity of the Batoka. — Purchase of a Canoe. — Ant-lions. — Herd of Hippo- 
potami. — Cataract Doctor ofKariba. — Albinos, human and hippopotamic. — 
Meet Sequasha, not quite so Black as painted. — Native Mode of Salutation. 
— Karivua. — Gallant Conduct of the Makololo. — Breakfast interrupted by 
Mambo Kazai. — Dinner spoiled by pretended Aid. — Banyai. — Bapids of 
Kebrabasa. — Dr. Kirk in Danger. — Sad Loss of MSS., etc. — Death of one 
of our Donkeys. — Amiable Squeamishness of Makololo. — Dinner a /aPanzo. 
— Beach Tette on the 23d of November. — "Jacks of all Trades." — Imposi- 
tion practiced on the King of Portugal's Colonial Scheme. 

Sinamane's people cultivate large quantities of tobacco, 
which they manufacture into balls for the Makololo market. 
Twenty balls, weighing about three quarters of a pound each, 
are sold for a hoe. The tobacco is planted on low moist spots 
on the banks of the Zambesi, and was in flower at the time 
we were there, in October. Sinamane's people appear to have 
abundance of food, and are all in good condition. He could 
sell us only two of his canoes, but lent us three more to carry 
us as far as Moemba's, where he thought others might be 
purchased. They were manned by his own canoe-men, who 
were to bring them back. The river is about 250 yards wide, 
and flows serenely between high banks toward the north- 
east. Below Sinamane's the banks are often worn down fifty 
feet, and composed of shingle and gravel of igneous rocks, 
sometimes set in a ferruginous matrix. The bottom is all 
gravel and shingle, how formed we can not imagine, unless 
in pot-holes in the deep fissure above. The bottom above 
the Falls, save a few rocks close by them, is generally sandy 
or of soft tufa. Every damp spot is covered with maize, 



336 SINAMANE'S CANOES. Chap. XVI. 

pumpkins, water-melons, tobacco, and hemp. There is a pret- 
ty numerous Batoka population on both sides of the river. 
As we sailed slowly down, the people saluted us from the 
banks by clapping their hands. A head man even hailed us, 
and brought a generous present of corn and pumpkins. 

Moemba owns a rich island, called Mosanga, a mile in 
length, on which his village stands. He has the reputation 
of being a brave warrior, and is certainly a great talker ; but 
he gave us strangers something better than a stream of words. 
We received a handsome present of corn, and the fattest goat 
we had ever seen ; it resembled mutton. His people were 
as liberal as their chief. They brought two large baskets of 
corn and a lot of tobacco as a sort of general contribution to 
the travelers. One of Sinamane's canoe-men, after trying to 
get his pay, deserted here, and went back before the stipu- 
lated time with the story that the Englishmen had stolen 
the canoes. Shortly after sunrise next morning, Sinamane 
came into the village with fifty of his " long spears," evi- 
dently determined to retake his property by force; he saw 
at a glance that his man had deceived him. Moemba rallied 
him for coming on a wild-goose chase. " Here are your ca- 
noes left with me, your men have all been paid, and the En- 
glishmen are now asking me to sell my canoes." Sinamane 
said little to us, only observing that he had been deceived by 
his follower. A single remark of his chief's caused the fool- 
ish fellow to leave suddenly, evidently much frightened and 
crestfallen. Sinamane had been very kind to us, and, as he 
was looking on when we gave our present to Moemba, we 
made him also an additional offering of some beads, and part- 
ed good friends. Moemba, having heard that we had called 
the people of Sinamane together to tell them about our Sav- 
ior's mission to man, and to pray with them, associated the 



Chap. XVI. FAIR DEALING OF MOEMBA. 337 

idea of Sunday with the meeting, and, before any thing of the 
sort was proposed, came and asked that he and his people 
might be " sundayed" as well as his neighbors, and be given 
a little seed wheat and fruit-tree seeds, with which request, 
of course, we very willingly complied. The idea of praying 
direct to the Supreme Being, though not quite new to all, 
seems to strike their minds so forcibly that it will not be for- 
gotten. Sinamane said that he prayed to God, Morungo, and 
made drink-offerings to him. Though he had heard of us, 
he had never seen white men before. 

When bargaining with Moemba for canoes, we were grati- 
fied to observe that he wished to deal fairly and honorably 
with us. " Our price was large ; but he had only two spare 
canoes. One was good — he would sell that; the other he 
would not sell us, because it had a bad trick of capsizing, and 
spilling whatever was inside it into the river ; he would lend 
us his own two large ones until we could buy others below." 
The best canoes are made from a large species of thorny aca- 
cia. These trees were now in seed ; and some of the natives 
boiled the pods in water, and mixed the decoction with their 
beer, to increase its intoxicating qualities. In times of great 
hunger the beans too are eaten, though very astringent. 

"We touched at Makonde's village to buy a canoe. They 
were having a gay time, singing, dancing, and drinking their 
beer extra strong. A large potful was at once brought to us. 
The chief spoke but little ; his orator did the talking and 
trading for him, and seemed anxious to show him how clev- 
erly he could do both. Many tiny stockades stand on the 
edge of the river ; they are built there to protect the women 
from the crocodiles while filling their water-pots. This is in 
advance of the Portuguese ; for, although many women are 
annually carried off by crocodiles at Senna and Tette, so lit- 

Y 



338 THE BATOKA'S GENEROSITY. Chap. XVI. 

tie are the lives of these poor drawers of water valued by the 
masters that they never think of erecting even a simple fence 
for their protection. Dr. Livingstone tried to induce the Pa- 
dre of Senna to move in this matter, offering to give twenty 
dollars himself, if a collection should be made after mass ; 
but the padre merely smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and did 
nothing. 

Beautiful crowned cranes, named from their note u ma- 
wang" were seen daily, and were beginning to pair. Large 
flocks of spur -winged geese, or machikwe, were common. 
This goose is said to lay her eggs in March. We saw also 
pairs of Egyptian geese, as well as a few of the knob-nosed, 
or, as they are called in India, combed geese. When the 
Egyptian geese, as at the present time, have young, the gos- 
lings keep so steadily in the wake of their mother that they 
look as if they were a part of her tail ; and both parents, when 
on land, simulate lameness quite as well as our plovers, to 
draw off pursuers. The ostrich also adopts the lapwing fash- 
ion, but no quadrupeds do : they show fight to defend their 
young instead. In some places the steep banks were dotted 
with the holes which lead into the nests of bee-eaters. These 
birds came out in hundreds as we passed. When the red- 
breasted species settle on the trees, they give them the ap- 
pearance of being covered with red foliage. 

Our land party came up to us on the evening of the 11th, 
a number of men kindly carrying their bundles for them. 
They had received valuable presents of food on the way. One 
had been given a goat, another fowls and maize. They be- 
gan to believe that these Batoka "have hearts," though at 
first, as those who inflict an injury usually are, they were sus- 
picious, and blamed them for hating the Makololo and kill- 
ing every one they met. Marauding parties of Makololo and 



Chap. XVI. WILD, HILLY COUNTRY. 339 

subject Batoka bad formerly made swoops on these very vil- 
lages. A few mornings since, Moloka appeared in great grief 
and fear : his servant Banyeu had* disappeared the day be- 
fore, and he was sure that the Batoka bad caught and killed 
bim. A few minutes after, this Eanyeu arrived, with two 
men who bad found bim wandering after sunset, had given 
bim supper and lodging, and, carrying his load for him, had 
brought him on to us. 

On the morning of the 12th of October we passed through 
a wild, hilly country, with fine wooded scenery on both sides, 
but thinly inhabited. The largest trees were usually thorny 
acacias, of great size and beautiful forms. As we sailed by 
several villages without touching, the people became alarmed, 
and ran along tbe banks, spears in band. We employed one 
to go forward and tell Mpande of our coming. This allayed 
their fears, and we went ashore, and took breakfast near tbe 
large island with two villages on it, opposite the mouth of 
the Zungwe, wbere we bad left tbe Zambesi on our way up. 
Mpande was sorry that he had no canoes of bis own to sell, 
but he would lend us two. He gave us cooked pumpkins 
and a water-melon. His servant had lateral curvature of tbe 
spine. We have often seen cases of humpback, but this was 
the only case of tbis kind of curvature we had met with. 
Mpande accompanied us himself in bis own vessel till we bad 
an opportunity of purchasing a fine large canoe elsewhere. 
We paid what was considered a large price for it: twelve, 
strings of blue cut-glass neck-beads, an equal number of large 
blue ones of tbe size of marbles, and two yards of gray cali- 
co. Had the beads been coarser tbey would have been more 
valued, because such were in fashion. Before concluding tbe 
bargain tbe owner said "his bowels yearned for his canoe, 
and we must give a little more to stop their yearning." This 



340 ANT-LIONS. Chap. XVI. 

was irresistible. The trading party of Sequasha, which we 
now met, had purchased ten large new canoes for sis strings 
of cheap coarse white beads each, or their equivalent, four 
yards of calico, and had bought for the merest trifle ivory 
enough to load them all. They were driving a trade in slaves 
also, which was something new in this part of Africa, and 
likely soon to change the character of the inhabitants. These 
men had been living in clover, and were uncommonly fat 
and plump. When sent to trade, slaves wisely never stint 
themselves' of beer or any thing else which their master's 
goods can buy. 

The insects called ant-lions (Myrmecoleo) were very numer- 
ous in sandy places under shady trees, even where but few 
ants were to be seen. These patient creatures lie in ambush, 
and have a great deal of extra labor at this season of the 
year. The high winds fill up their pitfalls with drifting sand, 
and no sooner have they carefully shoveled it all out, than it 
is again blown in, thus keeping them constantly at work till 
the wind goes down. 

The temperature of the Zambesi had increased 10° since 
August, being now 80°. The air was as high as 96° after 
sunset ; and, the vicinity of the water being the coolest part, 
we usually made our beds close by the river's brink, though 
there in danger of crocodiles. Africa differs from India in 
the air always becoming cool and refreshing long before the 
sun returns, and there can be no doubt that we can in this 
country bear exposure to the sun,- which would be fatal in In- 
dia. It is probably owing to the greater dryness of the Afri- 
can atmosphere that sunstroke is so rarely met with. In 
twenty-two years Dr. Livingstone never met or. heard of a 
single case, though the protective head-dresses of India are 
rarely seen. 



Chap. XVI. HERD OF HIPPOPOTAMI. 341 

When the water is nearly at its lowest, we occasionally 
meet with small rapids which are probably not in existence 
during the rest of the year. Having slept opposite the Eivulet 
Bume, which comes from the south, we passed the island of 
ISTakansalo, and went down the rapids of the same name on the 
17th, and came on the morning of the 19th to the more seri- 
ous ones of Nakabele, at the entrance to Kariba. The Mako- 
lolo guided the canoes admirably through the opening in the 
dike. When we entered the gorge we came on upward of 
thirty hippopotami: a bank near the entrance stretches two 
thirds across the narrowed river, and in the still place behind 
it they were swimming about. Several were in the channel, 
and our canoe-men were afraid to venture down among them, 
because, as they affirm, there is commonly an ill-natured one 
in a herd, which takes a malignant pleasure in upsetting ca- 
noes. Two or three boys on the rocks opposite amused them- 
selves by throwing stones at the frightened animals, and hit 
several on the head. It would have been no difficult matter 
to have shot the whole herd. We fired a few shots to drive 
them off; the balls often glance off the skull, and no more 
harm is done than when a schoolboy gets a bloody nose ; we 
killed one, which floated away down the rapid current, fol- 
lowed by a number of men on the bank. A native called to 
us from the left bank, and said that a man on his side knew 
how to pray to the Kariba gods, and advised us to hire him 
to pray for our safety while we were going down the rapids, 
or we should certainly all be drowned. - ISTo one ever risked 
his life in Kariba without first paying the river-doctor, or 
priest, for his prayers. Our men asked if there was a cataract 
in front, but he declined giving any information ; they were 
not on his side of the river ; if they would come over, then he 
might be able to tell them. We crossed, but he went off to 



34:2 DEAD HIPPOPOTAMUS. Chap. XVI. 

the village. We then landed and walked over the hills to 
have a look at Kariba before trusting our canoes in it. The 
current was strong, and there was broken water in some places, 
but the channel was nearly straight, and had no cataract, so 
we determined to risk it. Our men visited the village while 
we were gone, and were treated to beer and tobacco. The 
priest who knows how to pray to the god that rules the rapids 
followed us with, several of his friends, and they were rather 
surprised to see us pass down in safety, without the aid of his 
intercession. The natives who followed the dead hippopot- 
amus caught it a couple of miles below, and, having made it 
fast to a rock, were sitting waiting for us on the bank beside 
the dead animal. As there was a considerable current there, 
and the rocky banks were unfit for our beds, we took the hip- 
popotamus in tow, telling the villagers to follow, and we would 
give them most of the meat. The crocodiles tugged so hard at 
the carcass that we were soon obliged to cast it adrift, to float 
down in the current, to avoid upsetting the canoe. We had 
to go on so far before finding a suitable spot to spend the night 
in, that the natives concluded we did not intend to share the 
meat with them, and returned to the village. We slept two 
nights at the place where the hippopotamus was cut up.* 
The crocodiles had a busy time of it in the dark, tearing away 
at what was left in the river, and thrashing the water furious- 
ly with their powerful tails. The hills on both sides of Ka- 
riba are much like those of Kebrabasa, the strata tilted and 
twisted in every direction, with no level ground. 

Although the hills confine the Zambesi within a narrow 
channel for a number of miles, there are no rapids beyond 

* The animal was a female, and fat; it was 10 feet in length and 4 feet 1 
inch in height. A young bull obtained higher up was 4 feet 3 inches at the 
withers ; 9 feet 7 inches from the snout to insertion of the tail. 



Chap. XVI. HOSPITABLE OLD HEAD MAN. 343 

those near the entrance. The river is smooth and apparently 
very deep. Only one single human being was seen in the 
gorge, the country being too rough for culture. Some rocks 
in the water, near the outlet of Kariba, at a distance look like 
a fort ; and such large masses dislocated, bent, and even twist- 
ed to a remarkable degree, at once attest some tremendous 
upheaving and convulsive action of nature, which probably 
caused Kebrabasa, Kariba, and the Victoria Falls to assume 
their present forms ; it took place after the formation of the 
coal, that mineral having then been tilted up. We have prob- 
ably nothing equal to it in the present quiet operations of na- 
ture. 

On emerging we pitched our camp by a small stream, the 
Pendele, a few miles below the gorge. The Palabi mountain 
stands on the western side of the lower end of the Kariba 
Strait ; the range to which it belongs crosses the river, and 
runs to the southeast. Chikumbula, a hospitable old head 
man, under JSTchomokela, the paramount chief of a large dis- 
trict, whom we did not see, brought us next morning a great 
basket of meal, and four fowls, with some beer, and a cake of 
salt, "to make it taste good." Chikumbula said that the ele- 
phants plagued them by eating up the cotton-plants ; but his 
people seem to be well off. 

A few days before we came, they caught three buffaloes in 
pitfalls in one night, and, unable to eat them all, left one to 
rot. During the night the wind changed and blew from the 
dead buffalo to our sleeping-place ; and a hungry lion, not at 
all dainty in his food, stirred up the putrid mass, and growled 
and gloated over his feast, to the disturbance of our slumbers. 
Game of all kinds is in most extraordinary abundance, espe- 
cially from this point to below the Kafue, and so it is on Mo- 
selekatse's side, where there arc no inhabitants. The drought 



344 WHITE HIPPOPOTAMUS. Chap. XVI. 

drives all the game to the river to drink. An hour's walk on 
the right bank, morning or evening, reveals a country swarm- 
ing with wild animals : vast herds of pallahs, many water- 
bucks, koodoos, buffaloes, wild pigs, elands, zebras, and mon- 
keys appear ; francolins, Guinea-fowls, and myriads of turtle- 
doves attract the eye in the covers, with the fresh spoor of 
elephants and rhinoceroses, which had been at the river dur- 
ing the night. Every few miles we came upon a school of 
hippopotami asleep on some shallow sand-bank ; their bodies, 
nearly all out of the water, appeared like masses of black rock 
in the river. When these animals are hunted much they be- 
come proportionably wary, but here no hunter ever troubles 
them, and they repose in security, always, however, taking the 
precaution of sleeping just above the deep channel, into which 
they can plunge when alarmed. When a shot is fired into a 
sleeping herd, all start up on their feet, and stare with pecul- 
iar stolid looks of hippopotamic surprise, and wait for another 
shot before dashing into deep water. A few miles below Chi- 
kumbula's we saw a white hippopotamus in a herd. Our men 
had never seen one like it before. It was of a pinkish white, 
exactly like the color of the albino. It seemed to be the fa- 
ther of a number of others, for there were many marked with 
large light patches. The so-called white elephant is just such 
a pinkish albino as this hippopotamus. A few miles above 
Kariba we observed that, in two small hamlets, many of the 
inhabitants had a similar affection of the skin. The same in- 
fluence appeared to have affected man and beast. A dark- 
colored hippopotamus stood alone, as if expelled from the 
herd, and bit the water, shaking his head from side to side in 
a most frantic manner. This biting the water with his huge 
jaws is the hippopotamus' way of " slamming the door." 
When the female has twins she is said to kill one of them. 



Chap. XVI. SEQUASHA. 345 

We touched at the beautiful tree-covered island of Kalabi, 
opposite where Tuba-mokoro lectured the lion in our way up. 
The ancestors of the people who now inhabit this island pos- 
sessed cattle. The tsetse has taken possession of the country 
since the " beeves were lifted." No one knows where these 
insects breed; at a certain season all disappear, and as sud- 
denly come back, no one knows whence. The natives are 
such close observers of nature, that their ignorance in this 
case surprised us. A solitary hippopotamus had selected the 
little bay in which we landed, and where the women drew 
water, for his dwelling-place. Pretty little lizards, with light 
blue and red tails, run among the rocks, catching flies and 
other insects. These harmless — though to new-comers re- 
pulsive — creatures sometimes perform good service to man 
by eating great numbers of the destructive white ants. 

At noon on the 24th of October we found Sequasha in a 
village below the Kafue, with the main body of his people. 
He said that 210 elephants had been killed during his trip, 
many of his men being excellent hunters. The numbers of 
animals we saw renders this possible. He reported that, aft- 
er reaching the Kafue, he went northward into the country of 
the Zulus, whose ancestors formerly migrated from the south 
and set up a sort of republican form of government. Se- 
quasha is the greatest Portuguese traveler we ever became 
acquainted with, and he boasts that he is able to speak a doz- 
en different dialects ; yet, unfortunately, he can give but a 
very meagre account of the countries and people he has seen, 
and his statements are not very much to be relied on. But, 
considering the influences among which he has been reared, 
and the want of the means of education at Tette, it is a won- 
der that he possesses the good traits that he sometimes exhib- 
its. Among his wares were several cheap American clocks ; 



346 MODE OF SALUTATION. Chap. XVI. 

a useless investment rather, for a part of Africa where no one 
cares for the artificial measurement of time. These clocks 
got him into trouble among the Banyai : he set them all ago- 
ing in the presence of a chief, who became frightened at the 
strange sounds they made, and looked upon them as so many 
witchcraft agencies at work to bring all manner of evils upon 
himself and his people. Sequasha, it was decided, had been 
guilty of a milando or crime, and he had to pay a heavy fine 
of cloth and beads for his exhibition. He alluded to our hav- 
ing heard that he had killed Mpangwe, and he denied having 
actually done so ; but in his absence his name had got mixed 
up in the affair, in consequence of his slaves, while drinking 
beer one night with Namakusuru, the man who succeeded 
Mpangwe, saying that they would kill the chief for him. His 
partner had not thought of this when we saw him on the way 
up, for he tried to excuse the murder by saying that now they 
had put the right man into the chieftainship. 

From Tombanyama's onward the Zambesi is fall of islands, 
and many buffaloes had been attracted by the fresh young 
grass and reeds. One was shot on the forenoon of the 27th. 
Distant thunder was heard during the night, and, as usually 
happens in this state of the atmosphere, the meat spoiled so 
rapidly that it was not fit to eat next morning. Hunger in 
this case, and with no choice but want, made a bitter thing 
sweet. The same rapid decomposition is also produced if 
meat is hung on a papaw-tree for four or five hours ; an hour 
or two, however, makes it tender only. 

Three of Ma-mburuma's men brought us a present of meal 
and fowls, as we rested on the 28th on an island near Pode- 
bode. Their mode of salutation, intended to show good man- 
ners and respectful etiquette, was to clap the thigh with one 
hand while approaching with the present in the other; and, 



Chap. XVI. THE KAEIVUA RAPIDS. 347 

on sitting down before us, to clap the hands together, then to 
continue clapping on the thigh when thej handed the pres- 
ent to our men, and with both hands when they received one 
in return, and also on their departure. This ceremonious 
procedure is gone through with grave composure, and moth- 
ers may be observed enjoining on their children the proper 
clapping of the hands, as good manners are taught among 
ourselves. 

After three hours' sail on the morning of the 29th, the riv- 
er was narrowed again by the mountains of Mburuma, called 
Karivua, into one channel, and another rapid dimly appear- 
ed. It was formed by two currents guided by rocks to the 
centre. In going down it, the men sent by Sekeletu behaved 
very nobly. The canoes entered without previous survey, 
and the huge jobbling waves of mid-current began at once to 
fill them. With great presence of mind, and without a mo- 
ment's hesitation, two men lightened each by jumping over- 
board; they then ordered a Batoka man to do the same, as 
" the white men must be saved." " I can not swim," said the 
Batoka. " Jump out, then, and hold on to the canoe ;" which 
he instantly did. Swimming alongside, they guided the 
swamping canoes down the swift current to the foot of the 
rapid, and then ran them ashore to bale them out. A boat 
could have passed down safely, but our canoes were not a 
foot above the water at the gunwales. 

Thanks to the bravery of these poor fellows, nothing was 
lost, although every thing was well soaked. This rapid is 
nearly opposite the w r est end of the Mburuma Mountains or 
Karivua. Another soon begins below it. They are said to 
be all smoothed over when the river rises. The canoes had 
to be unloaded at this the worst rapid, and the goods carried 
about a hundred yards. By taking the time in w T hich a piece 



3-18 ARRIVE AT ZUMBO. Chap. XVI. 

of stick floated past 100 feet, we found the current to be run- 
ning six knots, by far the greatest velocity noted in the river. 
As the men were bringing the last canoe down close to the 
shore, the stern swung round into the current, and all except 
one man let go, rather than be dragged off. He clung to the 
bow, and was swept out into the middle of the stream. Hav- 
ing held on when he ought to have let go, he next put his 
life in jeopardy by letting go when he ought to have held on, 
and was in a few seconds swallowed up by a fearful whirl- 
pool. His comrades launched out a canoe below, and caught 
him as he rose the third time to the surface, and saved him, 
though much exhausted and very cold. 

The scenery of this pass reminded us of Kebrabasa, al- 
though it is much inferior. A band of the same black shin- 
ing glaze runs along the rocks about two feet from the wa- 
ter's edge. There was not a blade of grass on some of the 
hills, it being the end of the usual dry season succeeding a 
previous severe drought ; yet the hill-sides were dotted over 
with beautiful green trees. A few antelopes were seen on 
the rugged slopes, where some people too appeared lying 
down, taking a cup of beer. The Karivua Narrows are about 
thirty miles in length. They end at the mountain Eoganora. 
Two rocks, twelve or fifteen feet above the water at the time 
we were there, may in flood be covered and dangerous. Our 
chief danger was the wind, a very slight ripple being suffi- 
cient to swamp canoes. 

We arrived at Zumbo, at the mouth of the Loansrwa, on 
the 1st of November. The water being scarcely up to the 
knee, our land party waded this river with ease. A buffalo 
was shot on an island opposite Pangola's, the ball lodging in 
the spleen. It was found to have been wounded in the same 
Organ previously, for an iron bullet was imbedded in it, and 



Chap. XVI. FAVOR TO THE ENGLISH. 349 

the wound entirely healed. A great deal of the plant Pistia 
stratiotes was seen floating in the river. Many people inhabit 
the right bank about this part, yet the game is very abundant. 

As we were taking our breakfast on the morning of the 2d, 
the Mambo Kazai, of whom we knew nothing, and his men, 
came with their muskets and large powder-horns to levy a 
fine, and obtain payment for the wood we used in cooking. 
But on our replying to his demand that we were English, 
"Oh! are you?" he said; "I thought you were Bazungu 
(Portuguese). They are the people I take payments from ;" 
and he apologized for his mistake. Bazungu, or Azungu, is 
a term applied to all foreigners of a light color, and to Arabs ; 
even to trading slaves, if clothed ; it probably means foreign- 
ers or visitors — from zunga, to visit or wander — and the Port- 
uguese were the only foreigners these men had ever seen. As 
we had no desire to pass for people of that nation — quite the 
contrary — we usually made a broad line of demarcation by 
saying that we were English, and the English neither bought, 
sold, nor held black people as slaves, but wished to put a stop 
to the slave-trade altogether. 

"We called upon our friend Mpende in passing. He pro- 
vided a hut for us, with new mats spread on the floor. Hav- 
ing told him that we were hurrying on because the rains were 
near, "Are they near?" eagerly inquired an old counselor, 
"and are we to have plenty of rain this year?" We could 
only say that it was about the usual time for the rains to com- 
mence, and that there were the usual indications in great 
abundance of clouds floating westward, but that we knew noth- 
ing more than they did themselves. Some people occasion- 
ally take advantage of the supposed credulity of the natives 
to gain temporary applause ; but Africans are usually shrewd- 
enough to detect some discrepancy, and no one is duped but 



350 THUNDERSTORMS— HIPPOPOTAMI. Chap. XVI. 

the traveler himself. Mpende had been blamed for driving 
the clouds away during the past drought, and had to pay a 
heavy fine to the Pondoro as an atonement for his offense. It 
blew a gale on the night of the 4th, after which the wind sud- 
denly chopped round and blew down the river, and we had 
thunder, lightning, and rain. The temperature of both air 
and water was lowered next morning, the river having fallen 
7°, or to 78°. There were thunder-storms all around us dur- 
ing the day, and the Zambesi rose several inches, and became 
highly discolored. 

The hippopotami are more wary here than higher up, as 
the natives hunt them with guns. Having shot one on a shal- 
low sand-bank, our men undertook to bring it over to the left 
bank, in order to cut it up with greater ease. It was a fine 
fat one, and all rejoiced in the hope of eating the fat for but- 
ter, with our hard dry cakes of native meal. Our cook was 
sent over to cut a choice piece for dinner, but returned with 
the astonishing intelligence that the carcass was gone. They 
had been hoodwinked, and were very much ashamed of 
themselves. A number of Banyai came to assist in rolling it 
ashore, and asserted that it was all shallow water. They 
rolled it over and over toward the land, and, finding the rope 
we had made fast to it, as they said, an encumbrance, it was 
unloosed. All were shouting and talking as loud as they 
could bawl, when suddenly our expected feast plumped into a 
deep hole, as the Banyai intended it should do. When sink- 
ing, all the Makololo jumped in after it. One caught frantic- 
ly at the tail ; another grasped a foot ; a third seized the hip : 
" but, by Sebituane ! it would go down, in spite of all that we 
could do." Instead of a fat hippopotamus, we had only a lean 
fowl for dinner, and were glad enough to get even that. The 
hippopotamus, however, floated during the night, and was 



Ciiap. XVI. WATERBUCK SHOT. 351 

found about a mile below. The Banyai then assembled on the 
bank, and disputed our right to the beast: "It might have 
been shot by somebody else." Our men took a little of it and 
then left it, rather than come into collision with them. 

A fine waterbuck was shot in the Kakolole Narrows, at 
Mount Manyerere ; it dropped beside the creek where it was 
feeding ; an enormous crocodile, that had been watching it at 
the moment, seized and dragged it into the water, which was 
not very deep. The mortally-wounded animal made a desper- 
ate plunge, and, hauling the crocodile several yards, tore itself 
out of the hideous jaws. To escape the hunter, the waterbuck 
jumped into the river, and was swimming across, when an- 
other crocodile gave chase, but a ball soon sent it to the bot- 
tom. The waterbuck swam a little longer, the fine head 
dropped, the body turned over, and one of the canoes dragged 
it ashore. Below Kakolole, and still at the base of Manyerere 
Mountain, several coal-seams, not noticed on our ascent, were 
now seen to crop out on the right bank of the Zambesi. 

Chitora, of Chicova, treated us with his former hospitality. 
Our men were all much pleased with his kindness, and cer- 
tainly did not look upon it as a proof of weakness. They 
meant to return his friendliness when they came this way on 
a marauding expedition to eat the sheep of the Banyai, for 
insulting them in the affair of the hippopotamus ; they would 
then send word to Chitora not to run away, for they, being 
his friends, would do such a good-hearted man no harm. 

In our voyage down we had gleaned the following informa- 
tion respecting the river itself. From the point where we 
embarked at Sinamane's to Kansalo, the river is more navi- 
gable than between Tette and Senna, though much of it is 
only from 250 to 300 yards broad, or like the Thames at Lon- 
don Bridge. It is deep, and flows gently. A little below 



352 KEBRABASA EAPIDS. Chap. XVI. 

Kansalo, at Kariba, a basaltic dike, called Nakabele, with a 
wide opening in it, dangerous only for canoes, stretches like 
an artificial dam across the stream. The deep and narrow 
river then flows on for several miles through a range of lofty 
mountains. Still farther down, and from the Kafue eastward, 
it is at least half a mile wide ; the current is gentle, and there 
are many sandy islands. Then there is the rapid at Karivua, 
mentioned above, about 100 yards in length, with a current of 
nearly six knots an hour ; this is the most rapid part of the 
Zambesi except in actual cataracts. In the space below Zum- 
bo, and on to Chicova, the river is again broad and of easy nav- 
igation. Chicova, of which geographers have spoken some- 
times as a kingdom and sometimes as a cataract, is a district 
having a fertile plain on the south bank, and both sides of 
the river were formerly well cultivated ; but now it has no 
population. 

"We entered Kebrabasa Eapids at the east end of Chicova, 
in the canoes, and went down a number of miles, until the 
river narrowed into a groove of fifty or sixty yards wide, of 
which we have already spoken in describing the flood-bed and 
channel of low water. The navigation then became difficult 
and dangerous. A fifteen feet fall of the water in our absence 
had developed many cataracts. Two of our canoes passed 
safely down a narrow channel, which, bifurcating, had an ugly 
whirlpool at the rocky partition between the two branches, 
the deep hole in the whirls at times opening and then shut- 
ting. The doctor's canoe came next, and seemed to be drift- 
ing broadside into the open vortex, in spite of the utmost ex- 
ertions of the paddlers. The rest were expecting to have to 
pull to the rescue; the men saying, "Look where these peo- 
ple are going! look, look!" when a loud crash burst on our 
ears. Dr. Kirk's canoe was dashed on a projection of the 



Chap. XVI. WOMEN TO BE SOLD. 353 

perpendicular rocks by a sudden and mysterious boiling up 
of the river, which occurs at irregular intervals. Dr. Kirk 
was seen resisting the sucking-down action of the water, which 
must have been fifteen fathoms deep, and raising himself by 
his arms on to the ledge, while his steersman, holding on to 
the same rocks, saved the canoe ; but nearly all its contents 
were swept away down the stream. Dr. Livingstone's canoe 
meanwhile, which had distracted the men's attention, was 
saved by the cavity in the whirlpool filling up as the fright- 
ful eddy was reached. A few of the things in Dr. Kirk's 
canoe were left ; but all that was valuable, including a chro- 
nometer, a barometer, and, to our great sorrow, his notes of 
the journey and botanical drawings of the fruit-trees of the 
interior, perished. 

We now left the river, and proceeded on foot, sorry that 
we had not done so the day before. The men were thor- 
oughly frightened ; they had never seen such perilous navi- 
gation. They would carry all the loads rather than risk Ke- 
brabasa any longer; but the fatigue of a day's march over 
the hot rocks and burning sand changed their tune before 
night, and then they regretted having left the canoes ; they 
thought they should have dragged them past the dangerous 
places, and then launched them again. One of the two don- 
keys died from exhaustion near the Luia. Though the men 
eat zebras and quaggas, blood relations of the donkey, they 
were shocked at the idea of eating the ass ; " it would be like 
eating man himself, because the donkey lives with man, and 
is his bosom companion." We met two large trading parties 
of Tette slaves on their way to Zumbo, leading, to be sold for 
ivory, a number of Manganja women, with ropes round their 
necks, and all made fast to one long rope. 

Panzo, the head man of the village east of Kebrabasa, re- 

Z 



354 ENGLISH SAILOKS' FAKM. Chap. XVI. 

ceived us with great kindness. After the usual salutation he 
went up the hill, and, in a loud voice, called across the val- 
ley to the women of several hamlets to. cook supper for us. 
About eight in the evening he returned, followed by a pro- 
cession of women bringing the food. There were eight dish- 
es of nsima, or porridge, six of different sorts of very good 
wild vegetables, with dishes of beans and fowls, all delicious- 
ly well cooked and scrupulously clean. The wooden dishes 
were nearly as white as the meal itself: food also was brought 
for our men. Eipe mangoes, which usually indicate the vi- 
cinity of the Portuguese, were found on the 21st of Novem- 
ber ; and we reached Tette early on the 23d, having been ab- 
sent a little over six months. 

The two English sailors left in charge of the steamer were 
well, had behaved well, and had enjoyed excellent health all 
the time we were away. Their farm had been a failure. We 
left a few sheep, to be slaughtered when they wished for fresh 
meat, and two dozen fowls. Purchasing more, they soon had 
doubled the number of the latter, and anticipated a good sup- 
ply of eggs ; but they also bought two monkeys, and they ate 
all the eggs. A hippopotamus came up one night, and laid 
waste their vegetable garden ; the sheep broke into their cot- 
ton patch when it was in flower, and ate it all except the 
stems ; then the crocodiles carried off the sheep, and the na- 
tives stole the fowls. Nor were they more successful as gun- 
smiths: a Portuguese trader, having an exalted opinion of 
the ingenuity of English sailors, showed them a double-bar- 
reled rifle, and inquired if they could put on the browning, 
which had rusted off. "I think I knows how," said one, 
whose father was a blacksmith; "it's very easy; you have 
only to put the barrels in the fire." A great fire of wood was 
made on shore, and the unlucky barrels put over it, to secure 



Chap. XVI. THEIR HUMANITY. 355 

the handsome rifle color. To Jack's utter amazement, the 
barrels came asunder. To get out of the scrape, his com- 
panion and he stuck the pieces together with resin, and sent 
it to the owner, with the message, " It was all they could do 
for it, and they would not charge him any thing for the job I" 
They had also invented an original mode of settling a bar- 
gain; having ascertained the market price of provisions, they 
paid that, but no more. If the traders refused to leave the 
ship till the price was increased, a chameleon, of which the 
natives have a mortal dread, was brought out of the cabin ; 
and the moment the natives saw the creature, they at once 
sprang overboard. The chameleon settled every dispute in 
a twinkling. 

But, besides their good-humored intercourse, they showed 
humanity worthy of English sailors. A terrible scream 
roused them up one night, and they pushed off in a boat to 
the rescue. A crocodile had caught a woman, and was drag- 
ging her across a shallow sand-bank. Just as they came up 
to her she gave a fearful shriek : the horrid reptile had 
snapped off her leg at the knee. They took her on board, 
bandaged the limb as well as they could, and, not thinking 
of any better way of showing their sympathy, gave her a 
glass of rum, and carried her to a hut in the village. Next 
morning they found the bandages torn off, and the unfortu- 
nate creature left to die. " I believe," remarked Kowe, one 
of the sailors, "her master was angry with us for saving her 
life, seeing as how she had lost her leg." 

Having heard a great deal about a military and agricultur- 
al colon}'' which was sent out by the late King of Portugal, 
Don Pedro V., well known as a true - hearted man, we felt 
much interest in an experiment begun under his enlighten- 
ed auspices. Immediately after our arrival at Tette we called 



356 IMPOSITION ON DON PEDRO V. Chap. XVI. 

upon the new governor. His excellency coolly said that the 
king had been grossly deceived by those appointed to select 
the men. He smiled at his government sending out military 
convicts as colonists, and said, " These men are not fitted to 
do any thing in the country ; they know how to keep their 
arms clean, and nothing else. Of what possible use was it to 
send agricultural implements for men like these ? The gov- 
ernment is deceived respecting Africa." 



Chap. XVII. THE "ASTHMATIC" GROUNDED. 357 



CHAPTEE XVII. 

Down to Kongone. — Latest Bulletin of " the Asthmatic." — The old Lady's De- 
mise. — Reach Senna by Canoe. — Unprofitable Trading by Slaves. — The 
Biter bit, or Sequasha squeezed. — Coals dear by Slave Labor. — His Excel- 
lency's Yacht. — Kongone. — English Papers. — Flesh, Fowl, Fish, and har- 
monious Crabs of the Mangrove Swamps. — Busungu. — The Sawfish. 

The Zambesi being unusually low, we remained at Tette 
till it rose a little, and then left on the 3d of December for 
the Kongone. It was hard work to keep the vessel afloat; 
indeed, we never expected her to remain above water. New 
leaks broke out every day ; the engine-pump gave way ; the 
bridge broke down ; three compartments filled at night ; ex- 
cept the cabin and front compartment, all was flooded ; and 
in a few days we were assured by Kowe that "she can't be 
worse than she is, sir." He and Hutchins had spent much of 
their time, while we were away, in patching her bottom, pud- 
dling it with clay, and shoring it, and it was chiefly to please 
them that we again attempted to make use of her. We had 
long been fully convinced that the steel plates were thorough- 
ly unsuitable. On the morning of the 21st the uncomfort- 
able " Asthmatic" grounded on a sand-bank and filled. She 
could neither be emptied nor got off. The river rose during 
the night, and all that was visible of the worn-out craft next 
day was about six feet of her two masts. Most of the prop- 
erty we had on board was saved, and we spent the Christmas 
of 1860 encamped on the island of Chimba. Canoes were 
sent for from Senna; and we reached it on the 27th, to be 
again hospitably entertained by our friend, Senhor Ferrao. 

A large party of slaves belonging to the commandant, aft- 
er having been away the greater part of a year, had just re- 



358 DEARNESS OF SLAVE LABOR. Chap. XVII. 

turned from a trading expedition to Moselekatse's country. 
They had taken inland a thousand muskets and a large quan- 
tity of gunpowder, these being, they said, the only articles 
Moselekatse cares to purchase. They started on their jour- 
ney back with ivory, ostrich feathers, a thousand sheep and 
goats, and thirty head of fine cattle. Moselekatse sent, in ad- 
dition, as a token that the traders and he had parted good 
friends, a splendid white bull to the commandant. The os- 
trich feathers had been packed in reeds ; a fire broke out in 
the camp one night, and most of them were burned. On 
their way the cattle had to pass through a tsetse country, and 
they all died from the effects of the bite. The white bull per- 
ished within two days of Senna ; six hundred of the sheep 
and goats had been eaten, either because they became lame, 
or because the drivers were hungry. The commandant, hav- 
ing an attack of fever, was unable to calculate his losses, but 
intended to imprison the slaves, who, as usual, thought more 
of their own comfort than of their master's gain. Slave labor 
is certainly very dear ; for an Englishman with two wagons 
and ten people could have made a more profitable trip to 
Moselekatse's — from the much greater distances of Natal or 
the Cape — than was made by these hundreds of slaves. 

When we met Sequasha, he confessed to having already 
amassed 800 arrobas or 25,600 lbs. of ivory, the most of it 
purchased for a mere trifle. His comrade had about half 
that amount, or 12,800 lbs. When Sequasha returned to 
Tette in the following year, he was cast into prison in the 
fort. He had brought down several tons of ivory, and was 
soon a free man again. The ostensible reason for his impris- 
onment was the disorders he had been guilty of in the inte- 
rior ; but this was only like the customary manipulation by 
which, in pisciculture, the salmon is made to yield her spawn 



Chap. XVII. THE BITER BIT. 359 

before she swims off a free light fish again. Y^e do not envj 
the position of the colonist in these Portuguese convict settle- 
ments; but we do regret that our own countrymen of the 
Cape are prevented, by an unwise policy, from carrying their 
freedom and love of fair play into the country which is, so far 
as discovery goes, by right their own. And we may be per- 
mitted to record our heartfelt sorrow that Eobert Moffat, the 
son of the celebrated missionary, was so soon cut off in the 
midst of his days, and at the commencement of his noble en- 
deavors to carry lawful commerce into all the interior. 

It may be interesting to our Cape friends to know that, 
notwithstanding their occasionally laudable growling about 
the fickleness of Kaffir laborers, such laborers are much bet- 
ter than slaves. The coal here, as we have mentioned, lies 
quite exposed in cliff sections, in the sides of streams, which 
could easily be made available for carriage by lighters. A 
small vessel, exactly like the Ma-Eobert, was sent out by Don 
Pedro Y. for the navigation of the Zambesi, and orders were 
forwarded to Tette to have a supply of coal ready for her from 
the seam at which we had supplied our vessel. This order 
was carried out by slaves ; and from information supplied to 
us by the officer who superintended this easy mining opera- 
tion, we found that the mineral cost £1 per ton, or at least 
twice as much as it does by free labor at the pit's mouth in En- 
gland. Indeed, it would have been more expensive, if taken 
to the river's mouth, than coal brought by sea round the Cape 
to India. The facts mentioned showed that the chief expense 
incurred was in the food required by the slaves. The wages 
allowed in the calculation to the masters were very small. 
Coal from the mines at Tette, according to the present system 
of labor, could not be delivered at Kongone much under £10 
per ton. The contrast is more striking if we remember the 



360 REACH THE KONGONE. Chap. XVII. 

great depth at which the coal in England is obtained. We saw 
the vessel referred to above lying in Mozambique Harbor in 
1864 : it had not been used for the purpose it was sent out for, 
though it had been nearly three years there. What a howl 
would have rung through the Cape Colony if our governor 
there had kept a vessel, sent from Europe for the development 
of the colonial trade, for his excellency's own amusement ! 

We reached the "Kongone on the 4th of January, 1861. A 
flag-staff and a custom-house had been erected during our ab- 
sence ; a hut, also, for a black lance-corporal and three pri- 
vates. By the kind permission of the lance-corporal, who 
came to see us as soon as he had got into his trowsers and 
shirt, we took up our quarters in the custom-house, which, 
like the other buildings, is a small square floorless hut of man- 
grove stakes overlaid with reeds. The soldiers complained 
of hunger ; they had nothing to eat but a little mapira, and 
were making palm wine to deaden their cravings. While 
waiting for a ship, we had leisure to read the newspapers and 
periodicals we found in the mail which was waiting our ar- 
rival at Tette. Several were a year and a half old. 

Our provisions began to run short, and toward the end of 
the month there was nothing left but a little bad biscuit and 
a few ounces of sugar. Coffee and tea were expended, but 
scarcely missed, as our sailors discovered a pretty good sub- 
stitute in roasted mapira. Fresh meat was obtained in abund- 
ance from our antelope preserves on the large island made by 
a creek between the Kongone and East Luabo. 

Large herds of waterbuck (Aigocerus ellipsvprymnus) feed 
there on the grassy plains; when they desire fresh pasture 
they wait on the bank till the tide is low, and then swim the 
creeks, half a mile or more, with the greatest ease. These 
animals are difficult to kill, and seem at times to have as many 



Chap. XVII. HERDS OF WATEEBUCK. gQl 

lives as a cat. A shot in the neck is generally fatal, but they 
have frequently gone off, as if unhurt, with two or three En- 
field bullets in the lungs or other parts of the body. The 
lungs seemed to have numerous fibrous septa running into 
their substance, so as to form a congeries of small lobes, one 
of which might be wounded without much injury to the oth- 
ers ; but, while trying to find in this an explanation of the 
fact that a wound in the lungs of waterbucks did not kill, we 
never had the means and time for careful dissection. A fine 
male ran full speed upward of two hundred yards with part 
of the heart blown out by a Jacob's shell. It was hoped that 
Jacob's shells would put animals out of pain at once ; but, from 
exploding on a bone near the skin, or even on the skin, they 
were found not to answer our expectations. The Enfield ball, 
too, though propelled with prodigious velocity, is much too 
small to prove speedily fatal ; the large two-ounce round bul- 
let is the best of all, if it is well driven home. Near the sea 
the meat of the waterbuck is always juicy and well-flavored, 
reminding one of beef; but in the interior the flesh of the 
same kind of antelope is so dry and tough, that at last even 
our black men, though far from being fastidious, refused to eat 
it, and we gave up shooting antelopes there altogether. It is 
said to be a well-attested fact that the flesh of the sheep of the 
island of Halki is highly esteemed, and has a delicious flavor, 
in consequence, it is believed, of the animals drinking salt-wa- 
ter only. The vegetation here has usually a quantity of fine 
salt in efflorescence on it, and much of the water is brackish. 
The excellence of the flesh may in this case also, perhaps, be 
attributed to the salt It was only after partaking of it in the 
interior that we understood why Captain Harris had so low 
an opinion of it. 

The reedbuck (Redunca eleotragus) commonly lies close in 



362 THE BUSHBUCK. Chap. XVII. 

the long grass during the extreme heat of the day, and waits 
till the hunter is near before bounding off and uttering its 
whistle of alarm. A better acquaintance with the habits of 
animals might aid in their division into groups, as they ap- 
pear in nature, on the hills, plains, and marshes. The koodoo, 
pallah, blackbuck or kualata, klipspringer or kololo, are gener- 
ally seen on the hills, and, when pursued, flee to them for safe- 
ty. The gemsbuck or kukama, kama, tsessebe, gnu, eland, 
puti or diver, steinbuck, giraffe, nuni or blesbuck, springbuck 
or tsepe, and ourebi, are always on the plains ; while the wa- 
terbuck, reedbuck, lech we, poku, nakong, and bushbuck inhab- 
it swampy places, and flee to waters or swamps for protection. 

In the mornings and evenings the pretty -spotted bushbuck 
(Tragelaphus sylvatica) ventures, though only a short distance, 
out of the mangroves, to feed. When startled, its call of dan- 
ger is a loud bark, the imitation of which is its name among 
most of the native tribes — " mpabala," " mpsware." The wa- 
terbuck keeps the open plains, and seldom lies down during 
the day. On clear windy clays all the game are extremely 
wild and wary, and can only be stalked with the greatest dif- 
ficulty ; while in still, sultry weather, they may be approached 
with ease. 

A few leopards {Felis leopardus), called " tigre" by the Port- 
uguese, and troops of a green monkey called " pusi," find food 
and shelter among the mangroves. The hunting leopard (Fe- 
lis jubata\ with small round black spots, we never saw. 

In this focus of decaying vegetation, nothing is so much to 
be dreaded as inactivity. "We had, therefore, to find what 
exercise and amusement we could, when hunting was not re- 
quired, in peering about in the fetid swamps ; to have gone 
mooning about, in listless idleness, would have insured fever 
in its worst form, and probably with fatal results. 



Chap. XVII. THE BLENNY-FISH. 353 

A curious little blenny-fish swarms in the numerous creeks 
which intersect the mangrove topes. When alarmed, it hur- 
ries across the surface of the water in a series of leaps. It 
may be considered amphibious, as it lives as much out of the 
water as in it, and its most busy time is during low water. 
Then it appears on the sand or mud, near the little pools left 
by the retiring tide ; it raises itself on its pectoral fins into 
something of a standing attitude, and with its large projecting 
eyes keeps a sharp look-out for the light-colored fly on which 
it feeds. Should the fly alight at too great a distance for 
even a second leap, the blenny moves slowly toward it like a 
cat to its prey, or like a jumping spider ; and, as soon as it 
gets within two or three inches of the insect, by a sudden 
spring contrives to pop its underset mouth directly over the 
unlucky victim. He is, moreover, a pugnacious little fellow, 
and rather prolonged fights may be observed between him 
and his brethren. One, in fleeing from an apparent danger, 
jumped into a pool a foot square, which the other evidently 
regarded as his by right of prior discovery ; in a twinkling 
the owner, with eyes flashing fury and with dorsal fin bris- 
tling up in rage, dashed at the intruding foe. The fight waxed 
furious ; no tempest in a teapot ever equaled the storm of 
that miniature sea. The warriors were now in the water, and 
anon out of it, for the battle raged on sea and shore. They 
struck hard, they bit each other, until, becoming exhausted, 
they seized each other by the jaws like two bull-dogs, then 
paused for breath, and at it again as fiercely as before, until 
the combat ended by the precipitate retreat of the invader. 

The muddy ground under the mangrove-trees is covered 
with soldier-crabs, which quickly slink into their holes on any 
symptom of danger. When the ebbing tide retires, myriads 
of minute crabs emerge from their underground quarters, and 



364 HARMONIOUS CRABS. Chap. XVII. 

begin to work like so many busy bees. Soon many miles of 
the smooth sand become rough with the results of their labor. 
They are toiling for their daily bread : a round bit of moist 
sand appears at the little laborer's mouth, and is quickly brush- 
ed off by one of the claws ; a second bit follows the first ; and 
another, and still another come as fast as they can be laid 
aside. As these pellets accumulate, the crab moves sideways, 
and the work continues. The first impression one receives is 
that the little creature has swallowed a great deal of sand, and 
is getting rid of it as speedily as possible : a habit he indulges 
in of darting into his hole at intervals, as if for fresh supplies, 
tends to strengthen this idea ; but the size of the heaps form- 
ed in a few seconds shows that this can not be the case, and 
leads to the impression that, although not readily seen at the 
distance at which he chooses to keep the observer, yet that 
possibly he raises the sand to his mouth, where whatever ani- 
malcule it may contain is sifted out of it, and the remainder 
rejected in the manner described. At times the larger spe- 
cies of crabs perform a sort of concert ; and from each sub- 
terranean abode strange sounds arise, as if, in imitation of the 
songsters of the groves, for very joy they sang ! The wart- 
hogs (Phacochcerus Africanus) seem to be rather partial to 
these large, sound-producing crabs ; they dig them out of the 
muddy swamps during the night, and devour them. Shoals 
of small fish abound in the shallows between the Kongone and 
the land, Nyangalule, and this is the favorite fishing-station of 
a large flock of pelicans during the months they remain on 
the coast. These birds destroy an immense number of fish ; 
they breed in April on the low island off Kongone, and also 
on that off East Luabo. The eggs, of which we got a good 
supply, are so fishy in taste that anchovy sauce is necessary 
to render them palatable. At Luabo Island the turtles come 



Chap. XVII. - BUSUNGU. 365 

at stated times to lay their eggs, which have a tough mem- 
brane instead of a shell, and are pleasant in flavor. 

The mangrove itself is worth examining ; and Dr. Kirk 
found it, and trees and plants brought from a distance and 
stranded on these shores, an interesting and instructive study. 
One species of mangrove stands, at ebb tide, on its fantastic 
roots, raised high above the ground, while at flood tide the 
trunk seems as if planted on the surface of the water. Anoth- 
er has flat, broad, tortuous roots, placed on edge in the mud, 
so as to give it, even on that soft substance, a firm foundation 
to stand upon. The seeds of one species are formed somewhat 
like arrow-heads, and, in falling, are by their own weight shot 
into the soft ground, and self-planted. Another fruit nearly 
as large as a child's head, of no use, as far as we can guess, to 
man or beast, splits into pieces when it drops. The wood, 
however, makes excellent fuel, and possesses the valuable 
quality of burning freely in the furnace, even when green. 
It also makes capital rafters, which, from their straightness 
and length, are much esteemed by the Portuguese. 

We found some natives pounding the woody stems. of a 
poisonous climbing-plant (Direct, j^^ti^s) called Busungu, 
or poison, which grows abundantly in the swamps. When a 
good quantity was bruised it was tied up in bundles. The 
stream above and below was obstructed with bushes, and with 
a sort of rinsing motion the poison was diffused through the 
water. Many fish were soon affected, swam in shore, and 
died ; others were only stupefied. The plant has pink, pea- 
shaped blossoms, and smooth, pointed, glossy leaves, and the 
brown bark is covered with minute white points. The knowl- 
edge of it might prove of use to a shipwrecked party by en- 
abling them to catch the fish. 

The poison is said to be deleterious to man if the water is 



366 SEVERE GALES. . Chap. XVII. 

drunk, but not when the fish is cooked. The Busungu is re- 
pulsive to some insects, and is smeared round the shoots of 
the palm-trees to prevent the ants from getting into the palm' 
wine while it is dropping from the tops of the palm-trees into 
the little pots suspended to collect it. 

We were in the habit of walking from our beds into the 
salt water at sunrise for a bath, till a large crocodile appear- 
ed at the bathing-place, and from that time forth we took our 
dip in the sea, away from the harbor, about midday. This is 
said to be unwholesome, but we did not find it so. It is cer- 
tainly better not to bathe in the mornings, when the air is 
colder than the water — for then, on returning to the cooler 
air, one is apt to get a chill and fever. In the mouth of the 
river many sawfish are found. Eowe saw one while bathing 
— caught it by the tail, and shoved it, "snout on," ashore. 
The saw is from a foot to eighteen inches long. We never 
heard of any one being wounded by this fish, nor, though it 
goes hundreds of miles up the river in fresh water, could we 
learn that it was eaten by" the people. The hippopotami de- 
lighted to spend the day among the breakers, and seemed to 
enjoy the fun as much as we did. 

Several gales occurred during our stay on the Coast, and 
many small sea - birds {Prion Banksii, Smith) perished : the 
beach was strewn with their dead bodies, and some were found 
hundreds of yards inland ; many were so emaciated as to dry 
up without putrefying. We were plagued with myriads of 
musquitoes, and had some touches of fever ; the men we 
brought from malarious regions of the interior suffered al- 
most as much from it here as we did ourselves. This gives 
strength to the idea that the civilized withstand the evil influ- 
ences of strange climates better than the uncivilized. When 
negroes return to their own country from healthy lands, they 
suffer as severely as foreigners ever do. 



Chap. XVIII. BISHOP MACKENZIE. 357 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Arrival of "the Pioneer." — Mission Staff taken to Johanna. — Bishop Mac- 
kenzie joins the Expedition up theRovuma. — Fall of Water. — Return to Co- • 
moro. — Johanna. — Ascent of the Shire. — "The Pioneer" draws too much 
Water. — Charles Livingstone labors to stimulate Cotton Culture. — Want of 
Agents on the East Coast compared to the West Coast. — England's Labors 
there. — Their Value. — Expedition eminently successful. — Turning-point of 
Success. — Slaves rescued. — The Bishop accepts the Chief's invitation toMa- 
gomero. — Visit to the Ajawa, well-meant, ill-taken. — Stand at Bay. — lie- 
treat of the Ajawa. — Bishop Mackenzie's Mission at Magomero. — Extent 
of Dr. Livingstone's Responsibility. — Return to the Ship. 

On the 31st of January, 1861, our new ship, " the Pioneer," 
arrived from England, and anchored outside the bar ; but the 
weather was stormy, and she did not venture in till the 4th 
of February. 

• Two of H.M. cruisers came at the same time, bringing 
Bishop Mackenzie, and the Oxford and Cambridge Mission 
to the tribes of the Shire and Lake Nyassa. The Mission 
consisted of six Englishmen and five colored men from the 
Cape. It was a puzzle to know what to do with so many men. * 
The estimable bishop, anxious to commence his work without 
delay, wished the Pioneer to carry the Mission up the Shire 
as far as Chibisa's, and there leave them. But there were 
grave objections to this. The Pioneer was under orders to 
explore the Rovuma, as the Portuguese government had re- 
fused to open the Zambesi to the ships of other nations, and 
their officials were very effectually pursuing a system, which, 
by abstracting the labor, was rendering the country of no val- 
ue either to foreigners or to themselves. She was already two 
months behind her time, and the rainy season was half over. 
Then, if the party were taken to Chibisa's, the Mission would 



368 SCENERY ON THE KOVUMA. Chap. XVIII. 

be left without a medical attendant, in an unhealthy region, 
at the beginning of the most sickly season of the year, and 
without means of reaching the healthy highlands, or of re- 
turning to the sea. We dreaded that in the absence of med- 
ical aid, and all knowledge of the treatment of fever, there 
might be a repetition of the sorrowful fate which befell the 
similar non- medical Mission at Linyanti. It was well that 
we objected so strongly, for we afterward found that the bish- 
op had purchased our fever pills at the Cape, which must 
have been made of dirt instead of drugs. The bishop at last 
consented to proceed in the Lyra man-of-war to Johanna, and 
there leave the members of the Mission with H.M.'s Consul, 
Mr. Sunley, while he himself should accompany us up the 
Rovuma, in order to ascertain whether the country round its 
head- waters, which were reported to flow out of Nyassa, was 
a suitable place for a settlement. 

On the 25th of February the Pioneer anchored in the mouth 
of the Rovuma, which, unlike most African rivers, has a mag- 
nificent bay and no bar. We wooded, and then waited for 
the bishop till the 9th of March, when he came in the Lyra. 
On the 11th we proceeded up the river, and saw that it had 
fallen four or five feet during our detention. The scenery on 
the lower part of the Rovuma is superior to that on the Zam- 
besi, for we can see the highlands from the sea. Eight miles 
from the mouth the mangroves are left behind, and a beauti- 
ful range of well- wooded hills on each bank begins. On these 
ridges the tree resembling African blackwood, of finer grain 
than ebony, grows abundantly, and attains a large size. Few 
people were seen, and those were of Arab breed, and did not 
appear to be very well off. The current of the Rovuma was 
now as strong as that of the Zambesi, but the volume of water 

CD ' 

is very much less. Several of the crossings had barely water 



Chap. XVIII. FEVER ON BOARD. 369 

enough for our ship, drawing five feet, to pass. When we 
were thirty miles up the river, the water fell suddenly seven 
inches in twenty -four hours. As the March flood is the last 
of the season, and it appeared to be expended, it was thought 
prudent to avoid the chance of a year's detention by getting 
the ship back to the sea without delay.' Had the Expedition 
been alone, we would have pushed up in boats or afoot, and 
done what we could toward the exploration of the river and 
upper end of the lake ; but, though the Mission was a private 
one, and entirely distinct from our own, a public one, the ob- 
jects of both being similar, we felt anxious to aid our coun- 
trymen in their noble enterprise, and, rather than follow our 
own inclination, decided to return to the Shire, see the Mis- 
sion party settled safely, and afterward explore Lake Nyassa 
and the Eovuma from the lake downward. Fever broke out 
on board the Pioneer at the mouth of the Eovuma, as we 
thought from our having anchored close to a creek coming 
out of the mangroves, and it remained in her until we com- 
pletely isolated the engine-room from the rest of the ship. 
The coal-dust, rotting, sent out strong effluvia, and kept up 
the disease for more than a twelvemonth. 

Soon after we started, the fever put the Pioneer almost en- 
tirely into the hands of the original Zambesi Expedition, and 
not long afterward the leader had to navigate the ocean as 
well as the river. The habit of finding the geographical po- 
sitions on land renders it an easy task to steer a steamer with 
only three or four sails at sea, where, if one does not run 
ashore, no one follows to find out an error, and where a cur- 
rent affords a ready excuse for every blunder. 

Touching at Mohilla, one of the Comoro Islands, on our re- 
turn, we found a mixed race of Arabs, Africans, and their con- 
querors, the natives of Madagascar. Being Mohammedans, 
1 Aa 



370 SHIP DEAWS TOO MUCH WATER. Chap. XVIII. 

they have mosques and schools, in which we were pleased to 
see girls as well as boys taught to read the Koran. The 
teacher said he was paid by the job, and received ten dollars 
for teaching each child to read. The clever ones learn in six 
months, but the dull ones take a couple of years. We next 
went over to Johanna for our friends, and, after a sojourn of 
a few days at the beautiful Comoro Islands, sailed for the 
Kongone mouth of the Zambesi with Bishop Mackenzie and 
his party. We reached the coast in seven days, and passed 
up the Zambesi to the Shire. 

The Pioneer, constructed under the skillful supervision of 
Admiral Sir Baldwin Walker and the late Admiral Washing- 
ton, warm-hearted and highly -esteemed friends of the Expe- 
dition, was a very superior vessel, and well suited for our work 
in every respect except in her draught of water. Five feet 
were found to be too much for the navigation of the upper 
part of the Shire. Designed to draw three feet only, the 
weight necessary to impart extra strength, and fit her for the 
ocean, brought her down two feet more, and caused us a great 
deal of hard and vexatious work in laying out anchors, and 
toiling at the capstan to get her off sand-banks. We should 
not have minded this much but for the heavy loss of time, 
which might have been more profitably, and infinitely more 
pleasantly, spent in intercourse with the people, exploring 
new regions, and otherwise carrying out the objects of the 
Expedition. Once we were a fortnight on a bank of soft 
yielding sand, having only two or three inches less water than 
the ship drew ; this delay was occasioned by the anchors com- 
ing home, and the current swinging the ship broadside on the 
bank, which, immediately on our touching, always formed be- 
hind us. We did not like to leave the ship short of Chibisa's, 
lest the crew should suffer from the malaria of the lowland 



Chap. XVIII. CULTURE OF COTTON. 3 71 

around, and it would have been difficult to have got the Mis- 
sion goods carried up. We were daily visited by crowds of 
natives, who brought us abundance of provisions far beyond 
our ability to consume. In hauling the Pioneer over the shal- 
low places, the bishop, with Horace Waller and Mr. Scuda- 
more, were ever ready and anxious to lend a hand, and work- 
ed as hard as any on board. Had our fine little ship drawn 
but three feet, she could have run up and down the river at 
any time of the year with the greatest ease, but, as it was, 
having once passed up over a few shallow banks, it was im- 
possible to take her down again until the river rose in De- 
cember. She could go up over a bank, but not come down 
over it, as a heap of sand always formed instantly astern, 
while the current washed it away from under her bows. 

From the period of our second entrance among the tribes 
on the Shire, Charles Livingstone had very zealously turned 
his energies to inducing the people to cultivate cotton for ex- 
portation. The Ma-Eobert was so leaky that nothing more 
could be done, while we had her, than purchase small quanti- 
ties of cleaned cotton and yarn of native manufacture, to be 
submitted to our friends at Manchester, and to inculcate the 
probability of our countrymen coming to buy as much as 
could be raised. Much of what we bought itf this way was 
inevitably spoiled by the wet state of the vessel ; but the spe- 
cimens sent home were pronounced to be " the very kind of 
cotton most needed in Lancashire," and the yarn, or rather 
rove, which we bought at about a penny per pound, excited 
the admiration of practical manufacturers there. 

Now that we had more accommodation, Charles Living- 
stone pursued the same system of attempting to turn the in- 
dustrial energies of the natives to good account, and with very 
gratifying success. Cotton was bought, and cleaned with cot- 



372 WANT OF AGENTS. Chap. XVIII. 

ton-gins, and, though we were restricted by the great draught 
of the Pioneer to an area of less than seven miles, in three 
months he had collected 300 lbs. of clean cotton- wool, at less 
than a penny per pound. No great amount, certainly, when 
compared with the thousands of bales which come from other 
countries, but still sufficient to prove that cotton of superior 
quality can be raised by native labor alone ; and but for the 
slave-trade, which soon afterward swept all these people away, 
it is highly probable that in a few years the free labor could 
have been turned to account in the markets of the world. 

It was never intended that a government expedition should 
become a mere cotton collecting or mercantile speculation. 
We ascertained that the part of Africa in which we labored 
was pre-eminently suited for the better varieties of the cotton- 
plant ; that two species of excellent cotton had already been 
introduced, and so widely distributed by the natives them- 
selves as to render new seed unnecessary, and the indigenous 
kind quite an exception in the country. The climate and soil 
were found to be so well adapted for raising this product that 
no danger need ever be apprehended of the crops being cut 
off by frosts ; and, from all we could learn, free labor was as 
available here as it is in any other country in the world. But 
a mighty warft was felt in the entire absence of those bless- 
ings which England has unquestionably conferred on the 
West Coast. There were none of those Christian natives that 
can be numbered by thousands at Sierra Leone and elsewhere, 
who, whatever defects they may have, do possess the qualifi- 
cation of being trustworthy trade-agents among their country- 
men. Having carefully examined and compared both coasts, 
and making allowance for the fact that perhaps a majority of 
those on whom English benevolence has been expended have 
been the lowest of the low — liberated African slaves — and 



Chap. XVIII. SUCCESS OF THE EXPEDITION. 373 

likewise giving all due weight to the assertions of the traders 
who have used strong language to express their injured feel- 
ings in being prevented from using the people as brutes, we 
must say that the conduct of England on tfhe West Coast of 
late years deserves the world's admiration. Her generosity 
will appear grand in the eyes of posterity. Here, on the East 
Coast, we have the contrast. No trustworthy agents can be 
employed ; no education has been imparted ; and not even 
slave agents can be sent to a distance except on the promise 
of plunder and rapine. In the Mission we had now with us, 
we trusted that we saw the dawn of a better system for both 
Portuguese and natives than that which has been the bane 
of all progress for ages past. 

The Expedition, in spite of several adverse circumstances, 
was up to this point eminently successful in its objects. As 
will be afterward seen, we had opened a cotton-field, which, 
taking in the Shire and Lake Nyassa, was 400 miles in length. 
We had gained the confidence of the people wherever we had 
gone ; and, supposing the Mission of the Universities to be 
only moderately successful, as all we had previously known 
of the desire of the natives to trade had been amply confirm- 
ed, a perfectly new era had commenced in a region much lar- 
ger than the cotton-fields of the Southern States of America. 

We had, however, as will afterward be seen, arrived at the 
turning-point of our prosperous career, and soon came into 
contact with the Portuguese slave-trade ; and let any one re- 
flect on the injury that any country sustains, even by laws 
which only hamper trade and free commercial intercourse, and 
he may judge how utterly destructive to all prosperity that 
system must be, which not only fosters internecine wars, but 
renders the pursuit of agriculture perilous in times of peace. 

On at last reaching Chibisa's, we heard that there was war 



374 POOR HAMLETS. Chap. XVIII. 

d 
in the Manganja country, and the slave-trade was going on 

briskly. A deputation from a chief near Mount Zomba had 
just passed on its way to Chibisa, who was in a distant village, 
to implore him to come himself, or send medicine, to drive off 
the Waiao, Waiau, or Ajawa, whose marauding parties were 
desolating the land. A large gang of recently enslaved Man- 
ganja crossed the river, on their way to Tette, a few days be- 
fore we got the ship up. Chibisa's deputy was civil, and read- 
ily gave us permission to hire as many men to carry the bish- 
op's goods up to the hills as were willing to go. With a suf- 
ficient number, therefore, we started for the highlands on the 
15th of July, to show the bishop the country, which, from its 
altitude and coolness, was most suitable for a station. Our 
first day's march was a long and fatiguing one. The few ham- 
lets we passed were poor, and had no food for our men, and we 
were obliged to go on till 4 P.M., when we entered the small 
village of Chipindu. The inhabitants complained of hunger, 
and said they had no food to sell, and no hut for us to sleep in ; 
but, if we would only go on a little farther, we should come to 
a village where they had plenty to eat ; but we had traveled 
far enough, and determined to remain where we were. Before 
sunset as much food was brought as we cared to purchase, and, 
as it threatened to rain, huts were provided for the whole party. 
Next forenoon we halted at the village of our old friend 
Mbame, to obtain new carriers, because Chibisa's men, never 
before having been hired, and not having yet learned to trust 
us, did not choose to go farther. After resting a little, Mbame 
told us that a slave party on its way to Tette would presently 
pass through his village. a Shall we interfere?" we inquired 
of each other. "We remembered that all our valuable private 
baggage was in Tette, which, if we freed the slaves, might, to- 
gether with some government property, be destroyed in retali- 




' ._ _"vfr\:... 



Chap. XVIII. RETREAT OF SLAVE-HUNTERS. 377 

ation ; but this system of slave-hunters dogging us where pre- 
viously they durst not venture, and, on pretense of being "our 
children," setting one tribe against another, to furnish them- 
selves with slaves, would so inevitably thwart all the efforts, 
for which we had the sanction of the Portuguese government, 
that we resolved to run all risks, and put a stop, if possible, 
to the slave-trade, which had now followed on the footsteps 
of our discoveries. A few minutes after Mbame had spoken 
to us, the slave party, a long line of manacled men, women, 
and children, came wending their way round the hill and into 
the valley, on the side of which the village stood. The black 
drivers, armed with muskets, and bedecked with various ar- 
ticles of finery, marched jauntily in the front, middle, and 
rear of the line ; some of them blowing exultant notes out of 
long tin horns. They seemed to feel that they were doing a 
very noble thing, and might proudly march with an air of 
triumph ; but the instant the fellows caught a glimpse of the 
English, they darted off like mad into the forest — so fast, in- 
deed, that we caught but a glimpse of their red caps and the 
soles of their feet. The chief of the party alone remained ; 
and he, from being in front, had his hand tightly grasped by 
a Makololo ! He proved to be a well-known slave of the late 
Commandant at Tette, and for some time our own attendant 
while there. On asking him how he obtained these captives, 
he replied, he had bought them ; but on our inquiring of the 
people themselves, all, save four, said they had been captured 
in war. While this inquiry was going on, he bolted too. 
The captives knelt down, and, in their way of expressing 
thanks, clapped their hands with great energy. They were 
thus left entirely on our hands, and knives were soon busy at 
work cutting the women and children loose. It was more 
difficult to cut the men adrift, as each had his neck in the 



378 SLAVES FREED. Chap. XVIII. 

fork of a stout stick, six or seven feet long, and kept in by an 
iron rod which was riveted at both ends across the throat. 
With a saw, luckily in the bishop's baggage, one by one the 
men were sawn out into freedom. The women, on being told 
to take the meal they were carrying and cook breakfast for 
themselves and the children, seemed to consider the news too 
good to be true ; but, after a little coaxing, went at it with 
alacrity, and made a capital fire by which to boil their pots 
with the slave sticks and bonds, their old acquaintances 
through many a sad night and weary day. Many were mere 
children about five years of age and under. One little boy, 
with the simplicity of childhood, said to our men, "The oth- 
ers tied and starved us ; you cut the ropes and tell us to eat ; 
what sort of people are you? Where did you come from?" 
Two of the women had been shot the day before for attempt- 
ing to untie the thongs. This, the rest were told, was to pre- 
vent them from attempting to escape. One woman had her 
infant's brains knocked out. because she could not carry her 
load and it ; and a man was dispatched with an axe because 
he had broken down with fatigue. Self-interest would have 
set a watch over the whole rather than commit murder ; but 
in this traffic we invariably find self-interest overcome by con- 
tempt of human life and by blood-thirstiness. 

The bishop was not present at this scene, having gone to 
bathe in a little stream below the village ; but on his return 
he warmly approved of what had been done ; he at first had 
doubts, but now he felt that, had he been present, he would have 
joined us in the good work. Logic is out of place when the 
question with a true-hearted man is whether his brother-man 
is to be saved or not. Eighty-four, chiefly women and chil- 
dren, were liberated ; and on being told that they were now 
free, and might go where they pleased, or remain with us, they 



Chap. XVIII. PROCEED TO SOCHE'S. 379 

all chose to stay ; and the bishop wisely attached them to his 
Mission, to be educated as members of a Christian family. In 
this way a great difficulty in the commencement of a Mission 
was overcome. Years are usually required before confidence 
is so far instilled into the natives' mind as to induce them, 
young or old, to submit to the guidance of strangers profess- 
ing to be actuated by motives the reverse of worldly wisdom, 
and inculcating customs strange and unknown to them and 
their fathers. 

We proceeded next morning to Soche's with our liberated 
party, the men cheerfully carrying the bishop's goods. As we 
had begun, it was of no use to do things by halves, so eight 
others were freed in a hamlet on our path ; but a party of 
traders, with nearly a hundred slaves, fled from Soche's on 
hearing of our proceedings. Dr. Kirk and four Makololo fol- 
lowed them with great energy, but they made clear off to Tette. 
Six more captives were liberated at Mongazi's, and two slave- 
traders detained for the night, to prevent them from carrying 
information to a large party still in front. Of their own ac- 
cord they volunteered the information that the governor's 
servants had charge of the next party ; but we did not choose 
to be led by them, though they offered to guide us to his ex- 
cellency's own agents. Two of the bishop's black men from 
the Cape, having once been slaves, were now zealous emanci- 
pators, and volunteered to guard the prisoners during the 
night. So anxious were our heroes to keep them safe, that, 
instead of relieving each other by keeping watch and watch, 
both kept watch together till toward four o'clock in the morn- 
ing, when sleep stole gently over them both ; and the wake- 
ful prisoners, seizing the opportunity, escaped : one of the 
guards, perceiving the loss, rushed out of the hut, shouting, 
" They are gone, the prisoners are off, and they have taken my 



380 THE BISHOP INVITED TO MAGO^ERO. Chap. XYIII. 

rifle with them, and the women too ! Fire ! every body fire !" 
The rifle and the women, however, were all safe enough, the 
slave-traders being only too glad to escape alone. Fifty more 
slaves were freed next day in another village ; and, the whole 
party being stark-naked, cloth enough was left to clothe them, 
better probably than they had ever been clothed before. The 
head of this gang, whom we knew as the agent of one of the 
principal merchants of Tette, said that they had the license 
of the governor for all they did. This we were fully aware 
of without his stating it. It is quite impossible for any en- 
terprise to be undertaken there without the governor's knowl- 
edge and connivance. 

The portion of the highlands which the bishop wished to 
look at before deciding on a settlement belonged to Chiwawa 
or Chibaba, the most manly and generous Manganja chief we 
had met with on our previous journey. On reaching Nsam- 
bo's, near Mount Chiradzuru, we heard that Chibaba was 
dead, and that Chigunda was chief instead. Chigunda, ap- 
parently of his own accord, though possibly he may have 
learned that the bishop intended to settle somewhere in the 
country, asked him to come and live with him at Magomero, 
adding that there was room enough for both. This hearty 
and spontaneous invitation had considerable influence on the 
bishop's mind, and seemed to decide the question. A place 
nearer the Shire would have been chosen had he expected 
hJLS supplies to come up that river ; but the Portuguese, claim- 
ing the River Shire, though never occupying even its mouth, 
had closed it, as well as the Zambesi. 

Our hopes were turned to the Rovuma as a free highway 
into Lake Nyassa and the vast interior. A steamer was al- 
ready ordered for the Lake, and the bishop, seeing the ad- 
vantageous nature of the highlands which stretch an immense 



Chap. XVIII. A VILLAGE BURNT. 381 

way to the north, was more anxious to be near the Lake and 
the Kovuma than the Shire. When he decided to settle at 
Mao-omero, it was thought desirable, to prevent the country 
from being depopulated, to visit the Ajawa chief, and to try 
and persuade him to give up his slaving and kidnapping 
courses, and turn the energies of his people to peaceful pui* 
suits. 

On the morning of the 22d we were informed that the 
Ajawa were near, and were burning a village a few miles off. 
Leaving the rescued slaves, we moved off to seek an interview 
with these scourges of the country. On our way we met 
crowds of Manganja fleeing from the war in front. These 
poor fugitives from the slave-hunt had, as usual, to leave all 
the food they possessed, except the little they could carry on 
their heads. We passed field after field of Indian corn or 
beans, standing ripe for harvesting, but the owners were away. 
The villages were all deserted : one where we breakfasted two 
years before, and saw a number of men peacefully weaving 
cloth, and, among ourselves, called it the "Paisley of the hills," 
was burnt ; the stores of corn were poured out in cart-loads, 
and scattered all over the plain, and all along the paths, neither 
conquerors nor conquered having been able to convey it away. 
About two o'clock we saw the smoke of burning villages, and 
heard triumphant shouts, mingled with the wail of the Man- 
ganja women, lamenting over their slain. The bishop then 
engaged us in fervent prayer ; and, on rising from our knees, 
we saw a long line of Ajawa warriors, with their captives, 
coming round the hill-side. The first of the returning con- 
querors were entering their own village below, and we heard 
women welcoming them back with " lillilooings." The Ajawa 
head man left the path on seeing us, and stood on an ant-hill to 
obtain a complete view of our party. We called out that we 



382 VISIT TO THE AJAWA. Chap. XVIII. 

had come to have an interview with them, but some of the 
Manganja who followed us shouted u Our Chibisa is come :" 
Chibisa being well known as a great conjuror and general. 
The Ajawa ran off yelling and screaming "Nkondo! Nkon- 
do!" (War! War!) We heard the words of the Manganja, 
♦but they did not strike us at the moment as neutralizing all 
our assertions of peace. The captives threw down their loads 
on the path, and fled to the hills ; and a large body of armed 
men came running up from the village, and in a few seconds 
they were all around us, though mostly concealed by the pro- 
jecting rocks and long grass. In vain we protested that we 
had not come to fight, but to talk with them. They would 
not listen, having, as we remembered afterward, good reason, 
in the cry of " Our Chibisa." Flushed with recent victory 
over three villages, and confident of an easy triumph over a 
mere handful of men, they began to shoot their poisoned ar- 
rows, sending them with great force upward of a hundred 
yards, and wounding one of our followers through the arm. 
Our retiring slowly up the ascent from the village only made 
them more eager to prevent our escape ; and, in the belief 
that this retreat was evidence of fear, they closed upon us in 
blood-thirsty fury. Some came within fifty yards, dancing 
hideously ; others, having quite surrounded us, and availing 
themselves of the rocks and long grass hard by, were intent 
on cutting us off, while others made off with their women 
and a large body of slaves. Four were armed with muskets, 
and we were obliged in self-defense to return their fire and 
drive them off. When they saw the range of the rifles they 
very soon desisted and ran away ; but some shouted to us 
from the hills the consoling intimation that they would fol- 
low, and kill us where we slept. Only two of the captives 
escaped to us, but probably most of those made prisoners that 



Chap. XVIII. VISIT OF CHINSUNSE. 383 

day fled elsewhere in the confusion. We returned to the 
village which we had left in the morning, after a hungry, fa- 
tiguing, and most unpleasant day. 

Though we could not blame ourselves for the course we 
had followed, we felt sorry for what had happened. It was 
the first time we had ever been attacked by the natives or 
come into collision with them ; though we had always taken 
it for granted that we might be called upon to act in self- 
defense, we were on this occasion less prepared than usual, 
no game having been expected here. The men had only a 
single round of cartridge each ; their leader had no revolver, 
and the rifle he usually fired with was left at the ship, to save 
it from the damp of the season. Had we known better the 
effect of slavery and murder on the temper of these blood- 
thirsty marauders, we should have tried messages and pres- 
ents before going near them. 

The old chief Chinsunse came on a visit to us next day, 
and pressed the bishop to come and live with him. " Chi- 
gunda," he said, "is but a child, and the bishop ought to live 
with the father rather than with the child." But the old 
man's object was so evidently to have the Mission as a shield 
against the Ajawa, that his invitation was declined. While 
begging us to drive away the marauders that he might live 
in peace, he adopted the stratagem of causing a number of 
his men to rush into the village in breathless haste, with the 
news that the Ajawa were close upon us. And having been 
reminded that we never fought unless attacked, as we were 
the day before, and that we had come among them for the 
purpose of promoting peace, and of teaching them to wor- 
ship the Supreme, to give up selling His children, and to cul- 
tivate other objects for barter than each other, he replied, in 
a huff, " Then I am dead already." 



384 THE BISHOP'S DOUBTS. Chap. XVIII. 

The bishop, feeling, as most Englishmen would, at the pros- 
pect of the people now in his charge being swept off into slav- 
ery by hordes of men-stealers, proposed to go at once to the 
rescue of the captive Manganja, and drive the marauding 
Ajawa out of the country. All were warmly in favor of this 
save Dr. Livingstone, who opposed it on the ground that it 
would be better for the bishop to wait, and see the effect of 
the check the slave-hunters had just experienced. The Aja- 
wa were evidently goaded on by Portuguese agents from 
Tette, and there was no bond of union among the Manganja 
on which to work. It was possible that the Ajawa might be 
persuaded to something better, though, from having long been 
in the habit of slaving for the Quillimane market, it was not 
very probable. But the Manganja could easily be overcome 
piecemeal by any enemy ; old feuds made them glad to see 
calamities befall their next neighbors. We counseled them 
to unite against the common enemies of their country, and 
added distinctly that we English would on no account enter 
into their quarrels. On the bishop inquiring whether, in the 
event of the Manganja again asking aid against the Ajawa, it 
would be his duty to accede to their request, "No," replied 
Dr. Livingstone ; " you will be oppressed by their importu- 
nities ; but do not interfere in native quarrels." This advice 
the good man honorably mentions in his journal. "We have 
been rather minute in relating what occurred during the few 
days of our connection with the Mission of the English Uni- 
versities on the hills, because, the recorded advice having 
been discarded, blame was thrown on Dr. Livingstone's shoul- 
ders, as if the missionaries had no individual responsibilit}^ 
for their subsequent conduct. This, unquestionably, good 
Bishop Mackenzie had too much manliness to have allowed. 
The connection of the members of the Zambesi Expedition 



Chap. XVIII. THE MISSION STATION. 335 

with the acts of the bishop's Mission now ceased, for we re- 
turned to the ship and prepared for our journey to Lake Ny- 
assa. We cheerfully, if necessary, will bear all responsibility 
up to this point ; and if the bishop afterward made mistakes 
in certain collisions with the slavers, he had the votes of all 
his party with him, and those who best knew the peculiar 
circumstances, and the loving disposition of this good-heart- 
ed man, will blame him least. In this position and in these 
circumstances, we left our friends at the Mission Station. 

As a temporary measure, the bishop decided to place his 
Mission Station on a small promontory formed by the wind- 
ings of the little, clear stream of Magomero, which was so 
cold that the limbs were quite benumbed by washing in it in 
the July mornings. The site chosen was a pleasant spot to 
the eye, and completely surrounded by stately, shady trees. 
It was expected to serve for a residence till the bishop had 
acquired an accurate knowledge of the adjacent country and 
of the political relations of the people, and could select a 
healthy and commanding situation as a permanent centre of 
Christian civilization. Every thing promised fairly. The 
weather was delightful, resembling the pleasantest part of an 
English summer ; provisions poured in very cheap and in 
great abundance. The bishop, with characteristic ardor, com- 
menced learning the language, Mr. Waller began building, 
and Mr. Scudamore improvised a sort of infant school for the 
childreu, than which there is no better means for acquiring 
an unwritten tongue. 

Bb 



386 EAGER OFFER OF SERVICES. Chap. XIX. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Fresh Start for Lake Nyassa.— Carry a Boat past the Cataracts.— Humpbacked 
Spokesman.— Lakelet Pamalombe.— Indications of Malaria.— Lake Nyassa. 
—Depth. — Size. — Shape. — Bays. — Mountains and Storms. —Crowds of 
People.— Midge Cake.— Fish, Sanjika, etc.— Apparent Laziness of the Peo- 
ple.— Torpidity of Skin.— Buaze Nets.— Bark Cloth.— Beauty a la "Pelele." 
— Marenga's Generosity. — Horrors of inland Slave-trade.— Thieves; the 
first Robbery we suffered in Africa.— Native Graves.— Mazitu or Zulus.— 
Four days' Separation. —Rough Roads.— Man's Enemy, Man.— Our Dice 
Diviner vanishes, but reappears.— Elephants.— Arabs from Katanga. — Arab 
Geography of Tanganyika and Nyassa.— The Slave-trade.— Reed Huts in 
Papyrus.— Young Women got up for Sale.— Sensible old Woman.— Meet 
marauding Ajawa at Mikena's. — Elephants' athletic Sports. 

On the 6th of August, 1861, a few days after returning 
from Magomero, Drs. Livingstone and Kirk, and Charles Liv- 
ingstone, started for Nyassa with a light four - oared gig, a 
white sailor, and a score of attendants. "We hired people 
along the path to carry the boat past the forty miles of the 
Murchison Cataracts for a cubit of cotton cloth a day. This 
being deemed great wages, more than twice the men required 
eagerly offered their services. The chief difficulty was in 
limiting their numbers. Crowds followed us ; and, had we 
not taken down in the morning the names of the porters en- 
gaged, in the evening claims would have been made by those 
who only helped during the last ten minutes of the journey. 
The men of one village carried the boat to the next, and all 
we had to do was to tell the head man that we wanted fresh 
men in the morning. He saw us pay the first party, and had 
his men ready at the time appointed, so there was no delay 
in waiting for carriers. They often make a loud noise when 
carrying heavy loads, but talking and bawling does not put 



Chap. XIX. VILLAGE CONTRASTS. 387 

them out of breath. The country was rough and with little 
soil on it, but covered with grass and open forest. A few 
small trees were cut down to clear a path for our shouting 
assistants, who were good enough to consider the boat as a 
certificate of peaceful intentions, at least to them. Several 
small streams were passed, the largest of which were the Mu- 
kuru-Madse and Lesungwe. The inhabitants on both banks 
were now civil and obliging. Our possession of a boat, and 
consequent power of crossing independently of the canoes, 
helped to develop their good manners, which were not ap- 
parent on our previous visit. 

There is often a surprising contrast between neighboring 
villages. One is well off and thriving, having good huts, 
plenty of food, and native cloth, and its people are frank, 
trusty, generous, and eager to sell provisions ; while in the 
next the inhabitants may be ill -housed, disobliging, suspi- 
cious, ill fed, and scantily clad, and with nothing for sale, 
though the land around is as fertile as that of their wealthier 
neighbors. We followed the river for the most part to avail 
ourselves of the still reaches for sailing; but a comparatively 
smooth country lies farther inland, over which a good road 
could be made. Some of the five main cataracts are very 
grand, the river falling 1200 feet in the 40 miles. After pass- 
ing the last of the cataracts, we launched our boat for good 
on the broad and deep waters of the Upper Shire, and were 
virtually on the Lake, for the gentle current shows but little 
difference of level. The bed is broad and deep, but the course 
is rather tortuous at first, and makes a long bend to the east 
till it comes within five or six miles of the base of Mount 
Zomba. The natives regarded the Upper Shire as a prolon- 
gation of Lake Nyassa ; for where what we called the river 
approaches Lake Shirwa, a little north of the mountains, they 



388 HUMPBACKED SPOKESMAN. Chap. XIX. 

said that the hippopotami, " which are great night travelers," 
pass from one lake into the other. There the land is flat, and 
only a short land journey would be necessary. Seldom does 
the current here exceed a knot an hour, while that of the 
Lower Shire is from two to two and a half knots. Our land 
party of Makololo accompanied us along the right bank, and 
passed thousands of Manganja fugitives living in temporary 
huts on that side, who had recently been driven from their 
villages on the opposite hills by the Ajawa. 

The soil was dry and hard, and covered with mopane-trees ; 
but some of the Manganja were busy hoeing the ground and 
planting the little corn they had brought with them. The ef- 
fects of hunger were already visible on those whose food had 
been seized or burned by the Ajawa and Portuguese slave- 
traders. The spokesman or prime minister of one of the 
chiefs, named Kalonjere, was a humpbacked dwarf, a fluent 
speaker, who tried hard to make us go over and drive off the 
Ajawa; but he could not deny that by selling people Kalon- 
jere had invited these slave-hunters to the country. This is 
the second humpbacked dwarf we have found occupying the 
like important post ; the other was the prime minister of a 
Batonga chief on the Zambesi. 

As we sailed along we disturbed many white-breasted cor- 
morants ; we had seen the same species fishing between the 
cataracts. Here, with many other wild-fowl, they find sub- 
sistence on the smooth water by night, and sit sleepily on 
trees and in the reeds by day. Many hippopotami were seen 
in the river, and one of them stretched its wide jaws, as if to 
swallow the whole stern of the boat, close to Dr. Kirk's back; 
the animal was so near that in opening its mouth it lashed a 
quantity of water on to the stern-sheets, but did no damage. 
To avoid large marauding parties of Ajawa, on the left bank 



Chap. XIX. MUSQUITOES. 389 

of the Shire, we continued on the right, or western side, with 
our land party, along the shore of the small lake Pamalombe. 
This lakelet is ten or twelve miles in length, and five or six 
broad. It is nearly surrounded by a broad belt of papyrus, 
so dense that we could scarcely find an opening to the shore. 
The plants, ten or twelve feet high, grew so closely together 
that air was excluded, and so much, sulphureted hydrogen 
gas evolved that by one night's exposure the bottom of the 
boat was blackened. Myriads of musquitoes showed, as prob- 
ably they always do, the presence of malaria. 

We hastened from this sickly spot, trying to take the at- 
tentions of the musquitoes as hints to seek more pleasant 
quarters on the healthy shores of Lake ISTyassa ; and when we 
sailed into it on the 2d of September, we felt refreshed by 
the greater coolness of the air off this large body of water. 
The depth was the first point of interest. This is indicated 
by the color of the water, which, on a belt along the shore, 
varying from a quarter to half a mile in breadth, is light 
green, and this is met by the deep blue or indigo tint of the 
Indian Ocean, which is the color of the great body of Nyassa. 
We found the Upper Shire from nine to fifteen feet in depth ; 
but skirting the western side of the lake about a mile from 
the shore, the water deepened from nine to fifteen fathoms ; 
then, as we rounded the grand mountainous promontory, 
which we named Cape Maclear, after our excellent friend the 
Astronomer Koyal at the Cape of Good Hope, we could get 
no bottom with our lead -line of thirty -five fathoms. We 
pulled along the western shore, which was a succession of 
bays, and found that where the bottom was sandy near the 
beach, and to a mile out, the depth varied from six to four- 
teen fathoms. In a rocky bay about latitude 11° 40' we had 
soundings at 100 fathoms, though outside the same bay we 



390 LAKE NYASSA. Chap. XIX. 

found none with a fishing-line of 116 fathoms ; but this cast 
was unsatisfactory, as the line broke in coming up. Accord- 
ing to our present knowledge, a ship could anchor only near 
the shore. 

Looking back to the southern end of Lake Nyassa, the arm 
from which the Shire flows was found to be about thirty 
miles long and from ten to twelve broad. Eounding Cape 
Maclear, and looking to the southwest, we have another arm, 
which stretches some eighteen miles southward, and is from 
six to twelve miles in breadth. These arms give the south- 
ern end a forked appearance, and with the help of a little im- 
agination it may be likened to the "boot- shape" of Italy. 
The narrowest part is about the ankle, eighteen or twenty 
miles. From this it widens to the north, and in the upper 
third or fourth it is fifty or sixty miles broad. The length is 
over 200 miles. The direction in which it lies is as near as 
possible due north and south. Nothing of the great bend to 
the west, shown in all the previous maps, could be detected 
by either compass or chronometer, and the watch we used 
was an excellent one. The season of the year was very un- 
favorable. The " smokes" filled the air with an impenetrable 
haze, and the equinoctial gales made it impossible for us to 
cross to the eastern side. When we caught a glimpse of the 
sun rising from behind the mountains to the east, we made 
sketches and bearings of them at different latitudes, which en- 
abled us to secure approximate measurements of the width. 
These agreed with the times taken by the natives at the dif- 
ferent crossing-places, as Tsenga and Molamba. About the 
beginning of the upper third the lake is crossed by taking ad- 
vantage of the island Chizumara, which name in the native 
tongue means the "ending;" farther north they go round the 
end instead, though that takes several days. 



Chap. XIX. CAUGHT IN A STORM. 391 

The lake appeared to be surrounded by mountains, but it 
was afterward found that these beautiful tree-covered heights 
were, on the west, only the edges of high table-lands. Like 
all narrow seas encircled by highlands, it is visited by sudden 
and tremendous storms. We were on it in September and 
October, perhaps the stormiest season of the year, and were 
repeatedly detained by gales. At times, while sailing pleas- 
antly over the blue water with a gentle breeze, suddenly and 
without any warning was heard the sound of a coming storm, 
roaring on with, crowds of angry waves in its wake. "We 
were caught one morning with the sea breaking all around 
us, and, unable either to advance or recede, anchored a mile 
from shore, in seven fathoms. The furious surf on the beach 
would have shivered our slender boat to atoms had we tried 
to land. The waves most dreaded came rolling on in threes, 
with their crests, driven into spray, streaming behind them. 
A short lull followed each triple charge. Had one of these 
white-maned seas struck our frail bark, nothing could have 
saved us, for they came on with resistless force ; seaward, in 
shore, and on either side of us, they broke in foam, but we 
escaped. For six weary hours we faced those terrible trios, 
any one of which might have been carrying the end of our 
Expedition in its hoary head. A low, dark, detached, oddly- 
shaped cloud came slowly from the mountains, and hung for 
hours directly over our heads. A flock of night-jars (Come- 
tornis vexillarius), which on no other occasion come out by 
day, soared above us in the gale, like birds of evil omen. Our 
black crew became sea-sick, and unable to sit up or keep the 
boat's head to the sea. The natives and our land party stood 
on the high cliffs looking at us and exclaiming, as the waves 
seemed to swallow up the boat, "They are lost! they are all 
dead !" When at last the gale moderated and we got safely 



392 LARGE WAVES ON THE LAKE. Chap. XIX. 

ashore, they saluted us warmly, as after a long absence. From 
this time we trusted implicitly to the opinions of our seaman, 
John Neil, who, having been a fisherman on the coast of Ire- 
land, understood boating on a stormy coast, and by his advice 
we often sat cowering on the land for days together waiting 
for the surf to go down. He had never seen such waves be- 
fore. We had to beach the boat every night to save her from 
being swamped at anchor ; and, did we not believe the gales 
to be peculiar to one season of the year, would call Nyassa 
the "Lake of Storms." 

Lake Nyassa receives no great affluents from the west. 
The five rivers we observed in passing did not at this time 
appear to bring in as much water as the Shire was carrying 
out. They were from fifteen to thirty yards wide, and some 
too deep to ford ; but the evaporation must be very consid- 
erable. These streams, with others of about the same size 
from the mountains on the east and north, when swollen by 
the rains may be sufficient to account for the rise in the lake 
without any large river. The natives nearest the northern 
end denied the existence of a large river there, though at one 
time it seemed necessary to account for the Shire's perennial 
flow. Distinct white marks on the rocks showed that, for 
some time during the rainy season, the water of the lake is 
three feet above the point to which it falls toward the close 
of the dry period of the year. The rains begin here in No- 
vember, and the permanent rise of the Shire does not take 
place till January. The western side of Lake ISTyassa, with 
the exception of the great harbor to the west of Cape Maclear, 
is, as has been said before, a succession of small bays of near- 
ly similar form, each having an open sandy beach and pebbly 
shore, and being separated from its neighbor by a rocky head- 
land, with detached rocks extending some distance out to sea. 



Chap. XIX. DENSE POPULATION. 393 

The great southwestern bay referred to would form a mag- 
nificent harbor, the only really good one we saw to the west. 

The land immediately adjacent to the lake is low and fer- 
tile, though in some places marshy and tenanted by large 
flocks of ducks, geese, herons, crowned cranes, and other birds. 
In the southern part we have sometimes ten or a dozen miles 
of rich plains, bordered by what seem high ranges of well- 
wooded hills, running nearly parallel with the lake. North- 
ward the mountains become loftier and present some magnifi- 
cent views, range towering beyond range, until the dim, lofty 
outlines projected against the sky bound the prospect. Still 
farther north the plain becomes more narrow, until, near 
where we turned, it disappears altogether, and the mountains 
rise abruptly out of the lake, forming the northeast boundary 
of what was described to us as an extensive table-land, well 
suited for pasturage and agriculture, and now only partially 
occupied by a tribe of Zulus, who came from the south some 
years ago. These people own large herds of cattle, and are 
constantly increasing in numbers by annexing other tribes. 

Never before in Africa have we seen any thing like the 
dense population on the shores of Lake Nyassa. In the south- 
ern part there was an almost unbroken chain of villages. On 
the beach of wellnigh every little sandy bay, dark crowds 
were standing, gazing at the novel sight of a boat under sail ; 
and wherever we landed we were surrounded in a few sec- 
onds by hundreds of men, women, and children, who hasten- 
ed to have a stare at the " chirombo" (wild animals). To see 
the animals feed was the greatest attraction; never did the 
Zoological Society's lions or monkej^s draw more sight-seers 
than we did. Indeed, we equaled the hippopotamus on his 
first arrival among the civilized on the banks of the Thames. 
The wondering multitude crowded round us at meal-times 



394 NATIVE CUKIOSITY. Chap. XIX. 

and formed a thicket of dark bodies, all looking on, apparent- 
ly, with the deepest interest ; but they good-naturedly kept 
each other to a line we made on the sand, and left us room to 
dine. They were civil upon the whole. Twice they went 
the length of lifting up the edge of our sail, which we used as 
a tent, as boys do the curtains of traveling menageries at home. 
They named us indeed " chirombo," which means only the 
wild beasts that may be eaten, but they had no idea that we 
understood their meaning. No fines were levied on us, nor 
dues demanded. At one village only were they impudent, 
but they were " elevated" by beer. They cultivate the soil 
pretty extensively, and grow large quantities of rice and 
sweet potatoes, as well as maize, mapira, and millet. In the 
north, however, cassava is the staple product, which, with fish 
kept till the flavor is high, constitutes the main support of 
the inhabitants. During a portion of the year, the northern 
dwellers on the lake have a harvest which furnishes a singu- 
lar sort of food. As we approached our limit in that direc- 
tion, clouds, as of smoke rising from miles of burning grass, 
were observed bending in a southeasterly direction, and we 
thought that the unseen land on the opposite side was closing 
in, and that we were near the end of the lake. But next 
morning we sailed through one of the clouds on our own side, 
and discovered that it was neither smoke nor haze, but count- 
less millions of minute midges called "kungo" (a cloud or 
fog). They filled the air to an immense height, and swarmed 
upon the water, too light to sink in it. Eyes and mouth had 
to be kept closed while passing through this living cloud: 
they struck upon the face like fine drifting snow. Thousands 
lay in the boat when she emerged from the cloud of midges. 
The people gather these minute insects by night, and boil 
them into thick cakes, to be used as a relish — millions of 



Chap. XIX. ABUNDANCE OF FISH. 395 

midges in a cake. A kungo cake, an inch thick and as large 
as the blue bonnet of a Scotch plowman, was offered to us ; 
it was very dark in color, and tasted not unlike caviare, or 
salted locusts. 

Abundance of excellent fish are found in the lake, and near- 
ly all were new to us. The mpasa or sanjika, found by Dr. 
Kirk to be a kind of carp, was running up the rivers to spawn, 
like our salmon at home : the largest we saw was over two 
feet in length ; it is a splendid fish, and the best we have ever 
eaten in Africa. They were ascending the rivers in August 
and September, and furnished active and profitable emploj^ 
ment to many fishermen, who did not mind their being out of 
season. Weirs were constructed full of sluices, in each of 
which was set a large basket-trap, through whose single tor- 
tuous opening the fish once in has but small chance of escape. 
A short distance below the weir, nets are stretched across from 
bank to bank, so that it seemed a marvel how the most saga- 
cious sanjika could get up at all without being taken. Pos- 
sibly a passage up the river is found at night ; but this is not 
the country of Sundays or "close times" for either men or fish. 
The lake fish are caught chiefly in nets, although men, and 
even women with babies on their backs, are occasionally seen 
fishing from the rocks with hooks. 

A net with small meshes is used for catching the young fry 
of a silvery kind like pickerel, when they are about two inches 
long ; thousands are often taken in a single haul. We had a 
present of a large bucketful one day for dinner : they tasted 
as if they had been cooked with a little quinine, probably 
from their gall-bladders being left in. In deep water, some 
sorts are taken by lowering fish-baskets attached by a long 
cord to a float, around which is often tied a mass of grass or 
weeds, as an alluring shade for the deep-sea fish. Fleets of 



396 THE LAKE MEN. Chap. XIX. 

fine canoes are engaged in the fisheries. The men have long 
paddles, and stand erect while using them. They sometimes 
venture out when a considerable sea is running. Our Mako- 
lolo acknowledged that, in handling canoes, the Lake men 
beat them ; they were unwilling to cross the Zambesi even, 
when the wind blew fresh. The first impression one receives 
of the Lake Nyassa men is, that they are far from being in- 
dustrious — or, to be more explicit, are troubled with down- 
right laziness. Groups may be seen during the day lying fast 
asleep under the shady trees along the shore, and apparently 
taking life very easily ; but, on a little better acquaintance, 
this first impression is modified, and it is found that these fore- 
noon sleepers have been hard at work the greater part of the 
night. In the afternoon they begin to bestir themselves ; ex- 
amining and mending their nets, carrying them to the canoes, 
and coiling in their lines. In the evening they paddle of! to 
the best fishing station, and throughout most of the night the 
poor fellows are toiling in the water, dragging their nets. 
They too suffer from fever. We saw the herpetic eruptions 
round their mouths which often mark its cure, and found that 
the chills act on them, though their skin is much more torpid 
in function than ours. Hence that conformity to the customs 
of the natives, which some people enjoin, would require modi- 
fication for our highly excitable skins. Our beards grow as 
much in a week as theirs do in a month. 

Though there are many crocodiles in the lake, and some 
of an extraordinary size, the fishermen say that it is a rare 
thing for any one to be carried off by these reptiles. When 
crocodiles can easily obtain abundance of fish — their natural 
food — they seldom attack men ; but when unable to see to 
catch their prey, from the muddiness of the water in floods, 
they are very dangerous. 



Chap. XIX. BARK CLOTH. . 397 

Many men and boys are employed in gathering the buaze, 
in preparing the fibre, and in making it into long nets. The 
knot of the net is different from ours, for they invariably use 
what sailors call the reef knot, but they net with a needle 
like that we use. From the amount of native cotton cloth 
worn in many of the southern villages, it is evident that a 
goodly number of busy hands and patient heads must be em- 
ployed in the cultivation of cotton, and in the various slow 
processes through which it has to pass, before the web is fin- 
ished in the native loom. In addition to this branch of in- 
dustry, an extensive manufacture of cloth, from the inner bark 
of an undescribed tree, of the botanical group Ccesalpinece, is 
ever going on, from one end of the lake to the other ; and 
both toil and time are required to procure the bark, and to 
prepare it by* pounding and steeping it to render it soft and 
pliable. The prodigious amount of the bark clothing worn 
indicates the destruction of an immense number of trees ev- 
ery year, yet the adjacent heights seem still well covered 
with timber. 

The Lake people are by no means handsome : the women 
— to use our mildest term to the fair sex — are very plain, and 
really make themselves hideous by the means they adopt to 
render their persons beautiful and attractive. The pelele, or 
ornament for the upper lip, is universally worn by the ladies ; 
the most valuable is of pure tin, hammered into the shape of 
a small dish ; some are made of white quartz, and give the 
wearer the appearance of having an inch or more of one of 
Price's patent candles. thrust through the lip, and projecting 
beyond the tip of the nose. Some ladies, not content with 
the upper pelele, go to extremes, as ladies will, and insert an- 
other in the under lip, through a hole almost opposite the 
lower gums. A few peleles are made of a blood-red kind of 



398 NATIVE STYLE OF ORNAMENT. Chap. XIX. 

pipe-clay, much in fashion — "sweet things" in the way of lip- 
rings, but so hideous to behold that no time nor usage could 
make our eyes rest upon them without aversion. 

All the natives are tattooed from head to foot, the figures 
being characteristic of the tribes, and varying with them. 
The Matumboka, or Atimboka, raise up little knobs on the 
skin of their faces, after a fashion that makes them look as if 
covered all over with warts or pimples. The young girls are 
good - looking before this ugly adornment hardens the fea- 
tures, and gives them the appearance of age. Their gowns 
are indescribable, owing to the extreme scantiness of the ma- 
terial from which they are cut, and their beautiful teeth are 
notched or clipped to points like those of cats. 

In character, the Lake tribes are very much like other peo- 
ple; there are decent men among them, while'a good many 
are no better than they should be. They are open-handed 
enough : if one of us, as was often the case, went to see a net 
drawn, a fish was always offered. Sailing one day past a num- 
ber of men who had just dragged their nets ashore at one of 
the fine fisheries at Pamalombe, we were hailed and asked to 
stop, and received a liberal donation of beautiful fish. Ar- 
riving late one afternoon at a small village on the lake, a 
number of the inhabitants manned two canoes, took out their 
seine, dragged it, and made us a present of the entire haul. 
The northern chief, Marenga, a tall, handsome man, with a 
fine aquiline nose, whom we found living in his stockade in 
a forest about twenty miles north of the mountain Kowirwe, 
behaved like a gentleman to us. His land extended from 
Dambo to the north of Makuza Hill. He was specially gen- 
erous, and gave us bountiful presents of food and beer. "Do 
they wear such things in your country ?" he asked, pointing 
to his iron bracelet, which was studded with copper, and high- 



Chap. XIX. MARENGA'S GENEROSITY. 399 

ly prized. The doctor said he had never seen such in his 
country, whereupon Marenga instantly took it off and pre- 
sented it to him, and his wife also did the same with hers. 
On our return south from the mountains near the north end 
of the Lake, we reached Marenga's on the 7th of October. 
When he could not prevail upon us to forego the advantage 
of a fair wind for his invitation to " spend the whole day 
drinking his beer, which was," he said " quite ready," he load- 
ed us with provisions, all of which he sent for before we gave 
him any present. In allusion to the boat's sail, his people 
said that they had no bazimo, or none worth having, seeing 
they had never invented the like for them. The chief, Man- 
kambira, likewise treated us with kindness ; but wherever 
the slave-trade is carried on, the people are dishonest and un- 
civil ; that invariably leaves a blight and a curse in its path. 
The first question put to us at the Lake crossing-places was, 
11 Have you come to buy slaves?" On hearing that we were 
English, and never purchased slaves, the questioners put on a 
supercilious air, and sometimes refused to sell us food. This 
want of respect to us may have been owing to the impres- 
sions conveyed to them by the Arabs, whose dhows have 
sometimes been taken by English cruisers when engaged in 
lawful trade. Much foreign cloth, beads, and brass wire were 
worn by these ferrymen, and some had muskets. 

By Chitanda, near one of the slave crossing-places, we were 
robbed for the first time in Africa, and learned by experience 
that these people, like more civilized nations, have expert 
thieves among them. It might be only a coincidence ; but 
we never suffered from impudence, loss of property, or were 
endangered, unless among people familiar with slaving. We 
had such a general sense of security, that never, save when 
we suspected treachery, did we set a watch at night. Our 



400 THIEVES. Chap. XIX. 

native companions had, on this occasion, been carousing on 
beer, and had removed to a distance of some thirty yards, that 
we might not overhear their free and easy after-dinner re- 
marks, and two of us had a slight touch of fever ; between 
three and four o'clock in the morning some light-fingered 
gentry came, while we slept ingloriously — rifles and revolvers 
all ready — and relieved us of most of our goods. The boat's 
sail, under which we slept, was open all around, so the feat 
was easy. One of us felt his pillow moving, but, in the deli- 
cious dreamy state in which he lay, thought it was one of the 
attendants adjusting his covering, and so, as he fancied, let 
well alone. 

Awaking, as honest men do, at the usual hour, the loss of 
one was announced by "My bag is gone — with all my clothes; 
and my boots too!" "And mine!" responded a second. 
" And mine also !" chimed in the third, " with the bag of 
beads, and the rice!" "Is the cloth taken?" was the eager 
inquiry, as that would have been equivalent to all our money. 
It had been used for a pillow that night, and thus saved. 
The rogues left on the beach, close to our beds, the aneroid 
barometer and a pair of boots, thinking, possibly, that they 
might be of use to us, or, at least, that they could be of none 
to them. They shoved back some dried plants and fishes 
into one bag, but carried off many other specimens we had 
collected ; some of our notes also, and nearly all our clothing ; 
one of our party, indeed, rose with nothing belonging to him 
but what he happened to have on at the time; another was 
indebted to female curiosity for the safety of his best suit ; 
for, having on the day previous, Sunday, retired from the 
crowd to have a bath and change among the reeds, he looked 
about before being quite undressed, and found a crowd of 
ladies peering at the apparition. He retired without either 



Chap. XIX. SHELTER FROM A STORM. 401 

bath or change of apparel. One feels ashamed of the white 
skin ; it seems unnatural, like blanched celery — or white mice. 
On returning to the camp, which was surrounded with per- 
petual clatter and crowds of visitors all day, he changed his 
clothing after dark, putting on and sleeping in his best, as it 
was too late to change it again, so the worst only was stolen. 

We could not suspect the people of the village near which 
we lay. We had probably been followed for days by the 
thieves watching for an opportunity. And our suspicions 
fell on some persons who had come from the East Coast ; but 
having no evidence, and expecting to hear if our goods were 
exposed for sale in the vicinity, we made no fuss about it, and 
began to make new clothing. That our rifles and revolvers 
were left untouched was greatly to our advantage ; yet we 
felt it was most humiliating for armed men to have been so 
thoroughly fleeced by a few black rascals. 

Some of the best fisheries appear to be private property. 
We found shelter from a storm one morning in a spacious 
lagoon, which communicated with the lake by a narrow pas- 
sage. Across this strait stakes were driven in, leaving only 
spaces for the basket fish-traps. A score of men were busily 
engaged in taking out the fish. We tried to purchase some, 
but they refused to sell. The fish did not belong to them ; 
they would send for the proprietor of the place. The propri- 
etor arrived in a short time, and readily sold what we wanted. 

Some of the burying-grounds are very well arranged and 
well cared for ; this was noticed at Chitanda, and more par- 
ticularly at a village on the southern shore of the fine har- 
bor at Cape Maclear. Wide and neat paths were made in the 
burying-ground on its eastern and southern sides. A grand 
old fig-tree stood at the northeast corner, and its wide-spread- 
ing branches threw their kindly shade over the last resting- 

Cc 



402 NATIVE GKAVES. Chap. XIX. 

place of the dead. Several other magnificent trees grew 
around the hallowed spot. Mounds were raised as they are 
at home, but all lay north and south, the heads apparently 
north. The graves of the sexes were distinguished by the 
various implements which the buried dead had used in their 
different employments during life, but they were all broken, 
as if to be employed no more. A piece of fishing-net and a 
broken paddle told that a fisherman slept beneath that sod. 
The graves of the women had the wooden mortar, and the 
heavy pestle used in pounding the corn, and the basket in 
which the meal is sifted, while all had numerous broken cala- 
bashes and pots arranged around them. The idea that the 
future life is like the present does not appear to prevail ; yet 
a banana-tree had been carefully planted at the head of sev- 
eral of the graves, and, if not merely for ornament, the fruit 
might be considered an offering to those who still possess hu- 
man tastes. The people of the neighboring villages were 
friendly and obliging, and willingly brought us food for sale. 
Pursuing our exploration, we found that the northern part 
of the lake was the abode of lawlessness and bloodshed. The 
Mazite or Mazitu live on the highlands, and make sudden 
swoops on the villages of the plains. They are Zulus who 
came originally from the south, inland of Sofalla and Inham- 
bane, and are of the same family as those who levy annual 
tribute from the Portuguese on the Zambesi. All the vil- 
lages north of Mankambira's (lat. 11° 44/ south) had been re- 
cently destroyed by these terrible marauders, but they were 
foiled in their attacks upon that chief and Marenga. The 
thickets and stockades round their villages enabled the bow- 
men to pick off the Mazitu in security, while they were afraid 
to venture near any place where they could not use their 
shields. Beyond Mankambira's we saw burned villages, and 



Chap. XIX. FOUR DAYS' SEPARATION. 403 

the putrid bodies of many who had fallen by Mazitu spears 
only a few days before. Our land party were afraid to go 
farther, and dreaded meeting the inflicters of the terrible 
vengeance, of which they saw the evidence at every turning, 
without a European in their company. This reluctance on 
the part of the native land party to proceed without the pres- 
ence of a white man was very natural, because bands of the 
enemy who had ravaged the country were supposed to be 
still roaming about ; and, if these marauders saw none but 
men of their own color, our party might forthwith be at- 
tacked. Compliance with their request led to an event which 
might have been attended by very serious consequences. Dr. 
Livingstone got separated from the party in the boat for four 
days. Having taken the first morning's journey along with 
them, and directing the boat to call for him in a bay in sight, 
both parties proceeded north. In an hour Dr. Livingstone 
and his party struck inland, on approaching the foot of the 
mountains which rise abruptly from the lake. Supposing 
that they had heard of a path behind the high range which 
there forms the shore, those in the boat held on their course ; 
but it soon began to blow so fresh that they had to run ashore 
for safety. While delayed a couple of hours, two men were 
sent up the hills to look for the land party, but they could 
see nothing of them, and the boat party sailed as soon as it 
wns safe to put to sea, with the conviction that the missing 
ones would regain the lake in front. 

In a short time a small island or mass of rocks was passed, 
on which were a number of armed Mazitu, with some young 
women, apparently their wives. The head man said that he 
had been wounded in the foot by Mankambira, and that they 
were staying there till he could walk to his chief, who lived 
over the hills. They had several large canoes, and it was ev- 



404 TRY TO PURCHASE EOOD. Chap. XIX. 

ident that this was a nest of lake pirates, who sallied out by 
night to kill and plunder. They reported a path behind the 
hills, and, the crew being reassured, the boat sailed on. A 
few miles farther, another and still larger band of pirates 
were fallen in with, and hundreds of crows and kites hover- 
ed over and round the rocks on which they lived. Dr. Kirk 
and Charles Livingstone, though ordered in a voice of author- 
ity to come ashore, kept on their course. A number of ca- 
noes then shot out from the rocks and chased them. One 
with nine strong paddlers persevered for some time after all 
the others gave up the chase. A good breeze, however, en- 
abled the gig to get away from them with ease. After sail- 
ing twelve or fifteen miles north of the point where Dr. Liv- 
ingstone had left them, it was decided that he must be be- 
hind ; but no sooner had the boat's head been turned south, 
than another gale compelled her to seek shelter in a bay. 
Here a number of wretched fugitives from the slave-trade on 
the opposite shore of the lake were found ; the original in- 
habitants of the place had all been swept off the year before 
by the Mazitu. In the deserted gardens beautiful cotton was 
seen growing ; much of it had the staple an inch and a half 
long, and of very fine quality. Some of the plants were un- 
commonly large, deserving to be ranked with trees. 

On their trying to purchase food, the natives had nothing 
to sell except a little dried cassava root and a few fish : and 
they demanded two yards of calico for the head only of a 
large fish. "When the gale admitted of their return, their for- 
mer pursuers tried to draw them ashore by asserting that 
they had quantities of ivory for sale. Owing to a succession 
of gales, it was the fourth day from parting that the boat was 
found by Dr. Livingstone, who was coming on in search of it 
with only two of his companions. 



Chap. XIX. ARMED MAZITU. 405 

After proceeding a short distance up the path in which 
they had been lost sight of, they learned that it would take 
several days to go round the mountains and rejoin the lake ; 
and they therefore turned down to the bay, expecting to find 
the boat, but only saw it disappearing away to the north. 
They pushed on as briskly as possible after it, but the mount- 
ain flank which forms the coast proved excessively tedious and 
fatiguing ; traveling all day, the distance made, in a straight 
line, was under five miles. As soon as day dawned the 
march was resumed ; and, after hearing at the first inhabited 
rock that their companions had passed it the day before, a 
goat was slaughtered out of the four which they had with 
them, when suddenly, to the evident consternation of the 
men, seven Mazitu appeared armed with spears and shields, 
with their heads dressed fantastically with feathers. To hold 
a parley, Dr. Livingstone and Moloka, a Makololo man who 
spoke Zulu, went unarmed to meet them. On Dr. Living- 
stone approaching them, they ordered him to stop, and sit 
down in the sun, while they sat in the shade. "Ko, no!" 
was the reply; "if you sit in the shade, so will we." They 
then rattled their shields with their clubs, a proceeding which 
usually inspires terror; but Moloka remarked, "It is not the 
first time we have heard shields rattled," and all sat down to- 
gether. They asked for a present, to show their chief that 
they had actually met strangers — something as evidence of 
having seen men who were not Arabs. And they were re- 
quested in turn to take these strangers to the boat or to their 
chief. All the goods were in the boat, and to show that no 
present such as they wanted was in his pockets, Dr. Living- 
stone emptied them, turning out, among other things, a note- 
book : thinking it was a pistol, they started up, and said, "Put 
that in again." The younger men then became boisterous, 



406 THE MAZITU ALAEMED. Chap. XIX. 

and demanded a goat. That could not be spared, as they 
were the sole provisions. When they insisted, they were 
asked how many of the party they had killed, that they thus 
began to divide the spoil ; this evidently made them ashamed. 
The elders were more reasonable; they dreaded treachery, 
and were as much afraid of Dr. Livingstone and his party as 
his men were of them, for on leaving they sped away up the 
hills like frightened deer. One of them, and probably the 
leader, was married, as seen by portions of his hair sewn into 
a ring ; all were observed by their teeth to be people of the 
country, who had been incorporated into the Zulu tribe. 

The way still led over a succession of steep ridges, with 
ravines of from 500 to 1000 feet in depth ; some of the sides 
had to be scaled on hands and knees, and no sooner was the 
top reached than the descent began again. Each ravine had 
a running stream ; and the whole country, though so very 
rugged, had all been cultivated, and densely peopled. Many 
banana -trees, uncared-for patches of corn, and Congo-bean 
bushes attested former cultivation. The population had all 
been swept away ; ruined villages, broken utensils, and hu- 
man skeletons, met with at every turn, told a sad tale of 
"man's inhumanity to man." So numerous were the slain, 
that it was thought the inhabitants had been slaughtered in 
consequence of having made raids on the Zulus for cattle. 

We conjectured this to be the cause of the wholesale butch- 
ery, because Zulus do not usually destroy any save the old, 
and able-bodied men. The object of their raids in general is 
that the captured women and children may be embodied into 
the tribe, and become Zulus. The masters of the captives 
are kind to them, and the children are put on the same level 
as those of any ordinary man. In their usual plan, we seem 
to have the condition so bepraised by some advocates for slav- 



Chap. XIX. THE DICE DIVINER VANISHES. 407 

ery. The members of small disunited communities are taken 
under a powerful government — obtain kind masters, whom 
they are allowed to exchange for any one else within the 
tribe, and their children become freemen. It is, as our eyes 
and nostrils often found by the putrid bodies of the slain, a 
sad system nevertheless, yet by no means so bad as that 
which, causing a still greater waste of human life, consigns 
the surviving victims to perpetual slavery. The Zulus are' 
said never to sell their captives. 

Several Senna men were of the land party ; one of these, a 
dice diviner, being mortally afraid of the Mazitu, bolted the 
moment he saw our visitors. Before again starting his com- 
rades shouted for him, and called him by firing their mus- 
kets for a long time, but he could not be induced to come out 
from his hiding-place. 

Continuing the journey that night as long as light served, 
they slept unconsciously on the edge of a deep precipice, 
without fire lest the Mazitu should see it. Next morning 
most of the men were tired out, the dread of the apparition 
of the day before tending probably to increase the lameness 
of which they complained. When told, however, that all 
might return to Mankambira's save two, Moloka and Charlie, 
they would not, till assured that the act would not be consid- 
ered one of cowardice. Giving them one of the goats as pro- 
vision, another was slaughtered for the remainder of the par- 
ty, who, having found on the rocks a canoe which had be- 
longed to one of the deserted villages, determined to put to 
sea again ; but the craft was very small, and the remaining 
goat, spife of many a threat of having its throat cut, jumped 
and rolled about so as nearly to capsize it ; so Dr. Livingstone 
took to the shore again, and after another night spent with- 
out fire, except just for cooking, was delighted to see the boat 
coming back. 



408 THE DICE DIVINER REAPPEARS. Chap. XIX. 

We pulled that day to Mankambira's, a distance that on 
shore, with the most heart-breaking toil, had taken three days 
to travel. This was the last latitude taken, 11° 44/ S. The 
boat had gone about 24/ farther to the north, the land party 
probably half that distance, but fever prevented the instru- 
ments being used. Dr. Kirk and Charles Livingstone were 
therefore farthest up the lake, and they saw about 20' beyond 
their turning - point, say into the tenth degree of south lati- 
tude. From the heights of at least a thousand feet, over 
which the land party toiled, the dark mountain masses on 
both sides of the lake were seen closing in. At this eleva- 
tion the view extended at least as far as that from the boats, 
and it is believed the end of the lake lies on the southern 
borders of 10°, or the northern limits of 11°, south latitude. 

Mankambira thought that our diviner would die of starva- 
tion in the mountains ; but he promised that, if he survived 
and came to him, he would give him food, and send him after 
us. A week afterward the poor fellow overtook us, to the 
great delight of his comrades, who ran back to meet and sa- 
lute him; they danced and shouted with joy, and fired off 
their muskets. He had heard, from his place of concealment, 
his comrades calling for him and firing, but did not answer, 
because he thought that they were fighting with the Mazitu. 
Hunger at length drove him from the mountains. Mankam- 
bira treated him kindly, gave him food, and sent him on, as 
he had promised ; but a set of lawless fellows between Man- 
kambira's and Marenga's seized and robbed him, and put a 
slave-stick on his neck, intending to sell him as a slave, when 
some of the older men said that the English would come back 
and avenge the deed if they stole him. He was then let go, 
and Marenga also gave him food, and a piece of bark cloth 



Chap. XIX. HUNGRY NATIVES. 409 

Elephants are numerous on the borders of the lake, and 
surprisingly tame, being often found close to the villages. 
Hippopotami swarm very much at their ease in the creeks 
and lagoons, and herds are sometimes seen in the lake itself. 
Their tameness arises from the fact that poisoned arrows have 
no effect on either elephant or hippopotamus. Five of each 
were shot for food during our journey. Two of the elephants 
were females, and had only a single tusk apiece, and were 
each killed by the first shot. It is always a case of famine 
or satiety when depending on the rifle for food — a glut of 
meat or none at all. Most frequently it is scanty fare, except 
when game is abundant, as it is far up the Zambesi. "We had 
one morning two hippopotami and an elephant, perhaps in 
all some eight tons of meat, and two days after the last of a 
few sardines only for dinner. 

One morning, when sailing past a pretty-thickly inhabited 
part, we were surprised at seeing nine large bull elephants 
standing near the beach quietly flapping their gigantic ears. 
Glad of an opportunity of getting some fresh meat, we land- 
ed and fired into one. They all retreated into a marshy 
piece of ground between two villages. Our men gave chase, 
and fired into the herd. Standing on a sand hummock, we 
could see the bleeding animals throwing showers of water 
with their trunks over their backs. The herd was soon 
driven back upon us, and a wounded one turned to bay ; yet 
neither this one, nor any of the others, ever attempted to 
charge. Having broken his legs with a rifle ball, we fired 
into him at forty yards as rapidly as we could load and dis- 
charge the rifles. He simply shook his head at each shot, 
and received at least sixty Enfield balls before he fell. Our 
excellent sailor from the north of Ireland happened to fire 
the last, and, as soon as he saw the animal fall, he turned with 



410 AEAB GEOGRAPHY. Chap. XIX. 

an air of triumph to the doctor and exclaimed, "It was my 
shot that done it, sir!" 

In a few minutes, upward of a thousand natives were round 
the prostrate king of beasts ; and, after our men had taken all 
they wanted, an invitation was given to the villagers to take 
the remainder. They rushed at it like hungry hyenas, and 
in an incredibly short time every inch of it was carried off. 
It was only by knowing that the meat would all be used that 
we felt justified in the slaughter of this noble creature. The 
tusks weighed 62 lbs. each. A large amount of ivory might 
be obtained from the people of Nyassa, and we were frequent- 
ly told of their having it in their huts. 

While detained by a storm on the 17th of October at the 
mouth of the Kaombe, we were visited by several men be- 
longing to an Arab who had been for fourteen years in the 
interior at Katanga's, south of Cazembe's. - They had just 
brought clown ivory, malachite, copper rings, and slaves to 
exchange for cloth at the Lake. The malachite was said to 
be dug out of a large vein on the side of a hill near Katanga's. 
They knew Lake Tanganyika well, but had not heard of the 
Zambesi. They spoke quite positively, saying that the water 
of Lake Tanganyika flowed out by the opposite end to that 
of Nyassa. As they had seen neither of the overflows, we 
took it simply as a piece of Arab geography. We passed 
their establishment of long sheds next day, and were satisfied 
that the Arabs must be driving a good trade. It is difficult 
to get at facts, or draw out of the natives any reliable informa- 
tion respecting the country in front. Some are so suspicious 
of strangers that they show extreme caution in their answers, 
and are unwilling to commit themselves by any statement; 
while others draw largely upon their imagination, and tell 
marvels equal to the most romancing tales of ancient travel- 
ers, or say just what they think will please one. 



Chap. XIX. THE LAKE SLAVE-TRADE. ^\\ 

" How far is it to the end of the Lake ?" we inquired of an 
intelligent-looking native at the south part. " The other end 
of the Lake !" he exclaimed, in real or well-feigned astonish- 
ment; " who ever heard of such a thing ? Why, if one start- 
ed when a mere boy to walk to the other end of the Lake, he 
would be an old, gray-headed man before he got there. I 
never heard of such a thing being attempted." We were told 
on the Eovuma that that river flowed out of Nyassa ; and on 
the lower half of the Lake every one assured us that a canoe 
could sail out of JSTyassa into the Eovuma ; but above that 
their testimony differed, some saying that it ran near the Lake, 
but not out of it, and others were equally positive that it was 
several days' journey from Lake Nyassa. Mankambira had 
never heard of any large river in the north, and even denied 
its existence altogether; giving us, at the same time, the 
names of the different halting-places round the head of the 
Lake, and the number of days required to reach the coast op- 
posite his village, which corresponded, as nearly as we could 
judge, with the distance at which we have placed its end. 

The Lake slave-trade was going on at a terrible rate. Two 
enterprising Arabs had built a dhow, and were running her, 
crowded with slaves, regularly across the Lake. We were 
told she sailed the day before we reached their head-quar- 
ters. This establishment is in the latitude of the Portuguese 
slave-exporting town of Iboe, and partly supplies that vile 
market ; but the greater number of the slaves go to Kilwa.* 

* On one occasion one of our cruisers, the Wasp, when calling at Iboe, was 
taken for a large slaver just then expected. The slaves in the vicinity were all 
hurried into the town, and, when Captain J. C. Stirling landed, it was full of 
them. Our friend Major Sicard was at the time acting governor of Iboe, though 
very much against his own wishes. It had become public that the late gov- 
ernor had left, in certain boxes, vast sums of money accumulated by slave-trad- 
ing, and the governor general was said to be very much shocked that his confi- 
dential subordinate should have behaved so shamefully. Major Sicard had 



412 HORRORS OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. Chap. XIX. 

We did not see much evidence of a wish to barter. Some 
ivory was offered for sale ; but the chief traffic was in hu- 
man chattels. Would that we could give a comprehensive 
account of the horrors of the slave-trade, with an approxima- 
tion to the number of lives it yearly destroys ! for we feel 
sure that were even half the truth told and recognized, the 
feelings of men would be so thoroughly roused that this dev- 
ilish traffic in human flesh would be put down at all risks ; 
but neither we, nor any one else, have the statistics necessary 
for a work of this kind. Let us state what we do know of 
one portion of Africa, and then every reader who believes our 
tale can apply the ratio of the known misery to find out the 
unknown. We were informed by Colonel Eigby, late H. M. 
Political Agent and Consul at Zanzibar, that 19,000 slaves 
from this Nyassa country alone pass annually through the 
custom-house of that island. This is exclusive, of course, of 
those sent to Portuguese slave-ports. Let it not be supposed 
for an instant that this number, 19,000, represents all the vic- 
tims. Those taken out of the country are but a very small 

just received the thanks of our government for his most disinterested kindness 
to the Expedition (and now that he has gone, as we trust, to a better world, we 
would say never were public thanks accompanied by more fervent private grati- 
tude), and he was selected by the governor general to fill the vacant post of 
Governor at Iboe until the then recent scandal had passed away and been for- 
gotten. Major Sicard protested against being thus placed over a nest of slave- 
dealers, from which it is scarcely possible for any Portuguese to escape with 
untarnished honor, and naturally feared that the position he had acquired by 
receiving the thanks of the English government would be seriously affected by 
such questionable promotion. His remonstrances were all in vain, for the gov- 
ernor general insisted, and, as a soldier, our friend had nothing left but to obey. 
When Captain Stirling landed, Major Sicard was so much taken aback by his 
own false position and the crowd of slaves ready for exportation that he could 
scarcely articulate, and, forgetting his usual prompt politeness, did not even ask 
his visitor to sit down. It is scarcely possible to conceive the force of tempta- 
tion which must assail officers in a place like Iboe, which exists only by its ex- 
tensive trade in slaves, and where any man who might feel squeamish as to the 
profits would be universally esteemed a fool. 



Chap. XIX. LARGE SLAVE-PAKTY. 413 

section of the sufferers. We never realized the atrocious na- 
ture of the traffic until we saw it at the fountain-head. There 
truly " Satan has his seat." Besides those actually captured, 
thousands are killed and die of their wounds and famine, 
driven from their villages by the slave raid proper. Thou- 
sands perish in internecine war waged for slaves with their 
own clansmen and neighbors, slain by the lust of gain, which 
is stimulated, be it remembered always, by the slave purchas- 
ers of Cuba and elsewhere. The many skeletons we have 
seen among rocks and woods, by the little pools, and along 
the paths of the wilderness, attest the awful sacrifice of hu- 
man life, which must be attributed, directly or indirectly, to 
this trade of hell. We would ask our countrymen to believe 
us when we say, as we conscientiously can, that it is our de- 
liberate opinion, from what we know and have seen, that not 
one fifth of the victims of the slave-trade ever become slaves. 
Taking the Shire Valley as an average, we should say not 
even one tenth arrive at their destination. As the system, 
therefore, involves such an awful waste of human life — or 
shall we say of human labor ? — and, moreover, tends directly 
to perpetuate the barbarism of those who remain in the coun- 
try, the argument for the continuance of this wasteful course 
because, forsooth, a fraction of the enslaved may find good 
masters, seems of no great value. This reasoning, if not the 
result of ignorance, may be of maudlin philanthropy. A 
small armed steamer on Lake Nyassa could easily, by exer- 
cising a control, and furnishing goods in exchange for ivory 
and other products, break the neck of this infamous traffic in 
that quarter j for nearly all must cross the Lake or the Up- 
per Shire. 

Our exploration of the Lake extended from the 2d of Sep- 
tember to the 27th of October, 1861 ; and, having expended 



414 REED HUTS IN PAPYRUS. Chap. XIX. 

or lost most of the goods we had brought, it was necessary to 
go back to the ship. When near the southern end, on our 
return, we were told that a very large slave-party had just 
crossed to the eastern side. We heard the fire of three guns 
in the evening, and judged by the report that they must be 
at least six-pounders. They were said to belong to an Ajawa 
chief named Mukata. 

In descending the Shire, we found concealed in the broad 
belt of papyrus round the Lakelet Pamalombe, into which the 
river expands, a number of Manganja families who had been 
driven from their homes by the Ajawa raids. So thickly did 
the papyrus grow, that when beat down it supported their 
small temporary huts, though when they walked from one 
hut to another it heaved and bent beneath their feet as thin 
ice does at home. 

A dense and impenetrable forest of the papyrus was left 
standing between them and the land, and no one passing by 
on the same side would ever have suspected that human be- 
ings lived there. They came to this spot from the south by 
means of their canoes, which enabled them to obtain a living 
from the fine fish which abound in the lakelet. They had a 
large quantity of excellent salt sewed up in bark, some of 
which we bought, our own having run out. We anchored 
for the night off their floating camp, and were visited by myr- 
iads of musquitoes. Some of the natives show a love of coun- 
try quite surprising. We saw fugitives on the mountains, in 
the north of the Lake, who were persisting in clinging to the 
haunts of their boyhood and youth, in spite of starvation and 
the continual danger of being put to death by the Mazitu. 

A few miles below the lakelet is the last of the great slave- 
crossings. Since the Ajawa invasion the villages on the left 
bank had been abandoned, and the people, as we saw in our 
ascent, were living on the right or western bank. 



Chap. XIX. SENSIBLE OLD WOMAN. 415 

As we were resting for a few minutes opposite the valuable 
fishery at Movunguti, a young, effeminate-looking man from 
some sea-coast tribe came in great state to have a look at us. 
He walked under a large umbrella, and was followed by five 
handsome damsels gayly dressed and adorned with a view to 
attract purchasers. One was carrying his pipe for smoking 
bang, here called " chamba ;" another his bow and arrows ; 
a third his battle-axe ; a fourth one of his robes ; while the 
last was ready to take his umbrella when he felt tired. This 
show of his merchandise was to excite the cupidity of any 
chief who had ivory, and may be called the lawful way of 
carrying on the slave-trade. What proportion it bears to the 
other ways in which we have seen this traffic pursued, we 
never found means of forming a judgment. He sat and look- 
ed at us for a few minutes, the young ladies kneeling behind 
him ; and, having satisfied himself that we were not likely to 
be customers, he departed. 

On our first trip we met, at the landing opposite this place, 
a middle-aged woman of considerable intelligence, and pos- 
sessing more knowledge of the country than any of the men. 
Our first definite information about Lake Nyassa was obtain- 
ed from her. Seeing us taking notes, she remarked that she 
had been to the sea, and had there seen white men writing. 
She had seen camels also, probably among the Arabs. She 
was the only Manganja woman we ever met who was ashamed 
of wearing the "pelele," or lip-ring. She retired to her hut, 
took it out, and kept her hand before her mouth to hide the 
hideous hole in the lip while conversing with us. All the 
villagers respected her, and even the head men took a sec- 
ondary place in her presence. On inquiring for her now, we 
found that she was dead. We never obtained sufficient ma- 
terials to estimate the relative mortality of the highlands and 



416 



MARAUDING AJAWA. 



Chap. XIX. 





An old Manganja Woman, showing the Pelele, or Lip-ring, and the Tattooing in intersecting 
lines on face, arms, and body. 



lowlands ; but, from many very old, white-headed blacks hav- 
ing been seen on the highlands, we think it probable that 
even native races are longer lived the higher their dwelling- 
places are. 

We landed below at Mikena's and took observations for 
longitude, to verify those taken two years before. The village 
was deserted, Mikena and his people having tied to the other 
side of the river. A few had come across this morning to work 
in their old gardens, After completing the observations we 
had breakfast ; and, as the last of the things were being car- 
ried into the boat, a Manganja man came running down to his 
canoe, crying out, " The Ajawa have just killed my comrade I" 
We shoved off, and in two minutes the advanced guard of a 
large marauding party were standing with their muskets on 
the spot where we had taken breakfast. They were evidently 



Chap. XIX. MANGANJA FUGITIVES. 417 

surprised at seeing us there, and halted, as did also the main 
body of perhaps a thousand men. " Kill them," cried the 
Manganja ; "they are going up to the hills to kill the English," 
meaning the Missionaries we had left at Magomero. But hav- 
ing no prospect of friendly communication with them, nor con- 
fidence in Manganja's testimony, we proceeded down the river, 
leaving the Ajawa sitting under a large baobab, and the Man- 
ganja cursing them most energetically across the river. 

On our way up we had seen that the people of Zimika had 
taken refuge on a long island in the Shire, where they had 
placed stores of grain to prevent it falling into the hands of the 
Ajawa; supposing afterward that the invasion and war were 
past, they had removed back again to the main land on the 
east, and were living in fancied security. On approaching 
the chief's village, which was built in the midst of a beauti- 
ful grove of lofty wild fig and palm trees, sounds of revelry 
fell upon our ears. The people were having a merry time — 
drumming, dancing, and drinking beer — while a powerful en- 
emy was close at hand, bringing death or slavery to every 
one in the village. One of our men called out to several who 
came to the bank to look at us that the Ajawa were coming, 
and were even now at Mikena's village ; but they were dazed 
with drinking, and took no notice of the warning. 

In passing a temporary village of Manganja fugitives, we 
saw a poor fellow with his neck in a slave-stick, and landed 
-a few hundred feet below ; but when we walked up to the spot 
at which he had been, he had vanished, and every one denied 
having seen such a person there. Though suffering so ter- 
ribly from the slave-trade themselves, these Manganja still 
patronized it. A man, near whose temporary hut we slept 
among a crowd of fugitives, started even before sunrise to sell 
a boy to some black Portuguese who were purchasing slaves 

Dd 



418 TETTE SLAVERS. Chap. XIX. 

in a neighboring village. The fortune of war had brought 
this poor boy into the fellow's power, and the heartlessness 
of the ruffian, who had himself suffered the loss of every thing 
by the slave-hunters, made us look upon him and his race as 
without natural affection. Selling each other when on # the 
point of perishing by starvation, not for grain, but cloth, of 
which there was no great lack, was so very unnatural, that at 
first we felt as if no mortal men, except blacks, could be guil- 
ty of such cruelty, and began to speculate how the idea of 
property in human kind could ever enter into beings possess- 
ing reasonable minds like our own. We remembered, how- 
ever, having seen a man who was reputed humane, and in 
whose veins no black blood flowed, parting for the sum of 
twenty dollars, or about £4, with a good-looking girl, who 
stood in a closer relationship to him than this boy did to the 
man who excited our ire ; and, she being the nurse of his son 
besides, both son and nurse made such a pitiable wail for an 
entire day, that even the half-caste who had bought her re- 
lented, and offered to return her to the white man, but in vain. 
Community in suffering does not always beget sympathy, 
though we naturally expect it should. This was proved in 
the case of the wreck of the French transport ship Medusa, 
on the West Coast, and may not be peculiar to black men. 

The Tette slavers subsequently brought over corn (mapira), 
and therewith bought many slaves. This might be consid- 
ered in one sense humane, as it actually kept many poor crea- 
tures from death by starvation ; but, as in the case of the 
"removal to kind masters" scheme, the saviors of lives are 
actually the destroyers of all the lives that are lost. 

A number of elephants were standing near the spot where 
we left the boat, and one of the herd was engaged in the ele- 
phantine amusement of breaking down trees \ he did not eat 



Chap. XIX. CONDUCT OF THE MANGANJA. 419 

any part of them, but, simply rejoicing in his strength, was 
knocking them over for the mere fun of the thing. ' Three 
Enfield and other rifle balls in the head sent him rushing 
through the thick bush with apparently as much ease as if it 
were only grass : an immense number of trees are destroyed 
by these huge beasts. They frequently chew the branches 
for the bark and the sap alone. 

Crowds of carriers offered their services after we left the 
river. Several sets of them placed so much confidence in us 
as to decline receiving payment at the end of the first day ; 
they wished to work another clay, and so receive both days' 
wages in one piece. The young head man of a new village 
himself came on with his men. The march' was a pretty long- 
one, and one of the men proposed to lay the burdens down 
beside a hut a mile or more from the next village. The head 
man scolded the fellow for his meanness in wishing to get rid 
of our goods where we could not procure carriers, and made * 
him carry them on. The village at the foot of the cataracts 
had increased very much in size and wealth since we passed 
it on our way up. A number of large new huts had been 
built, and the people had a good stock of cloth and beads. 
We could not account for this sudden prosperity until we saw 
some fine large canoes, instead of the two old, leaky things 
which lay there before. This had become a crossing-place for 
the slaves that the Portuguese agents were carrying to Tette, 
because they were afraid to take them across nearer to where 
the ship lay, about seven miles off. Nothing was more dis- 
heartening than this conduct of the Manganja in profiting by 
the entire breaking up of their nation. It was nearly as bad 
as the behavior of our own countrymen, who bought up mus- 
kets and sent them out to the Chinese engaged in war with 
our own soldiers, or of those who, at the Cape, supplied am- 



420 EXTRACT FKOM COL. EIGBY'S DISPATCH. Chap. XIX. 

munition to the Kaffirs under similar circumstances, and cool- 
ly fathered the traffic on the missionaries. 

Extract of a Dispatch from Lieut. Col. C P. Rigby, H. M. Consul and British 
Agent, Zanzibar, toH.lL. Anderson, Esq., Secretary to Government, Bombay. 

" British Consulate, Zanzibar, 15th July, 1860. 

" Sir, — I have the honor to report, for the information of the Right Honor- 
able the Governor in Council, that Dr. Albrect Roscher, a gentleman who was 
sent by his majesty, the King of Bavaria, on a scientific mission to E. Africa", 
was murdered on the 19th of March last, at the village of Kisoongoonee, three 
days' journey to the northeast of Lake Nyassa." 

***** * * 

After some information bearing on Dr. Roscher's other movements, the dis- 
patch proceeds : 

"4. He again left Zanzibar in June, 1859, to explore the great Lake of Ny- 
assa, and, having joined a caravan at Keelwa, started from that part on the 
24th of August last, and reached the Lake on the 19th of November, being the 
first white man who has ever reached its shores." 

[The reason of Colonel Rigby's mistake was, that sufficient time had not 
elapsed for the news of our discovery of Nyassa to reach him at Zanzibar ; nor 
was it then known that the lake Dr. Roscher and we had both visited was one 
and the same. It does not in the least detract from the honor due to Dr. 
Roscher for reaching the Lake by a path totally distinct from ours, that others 
had preceded him in the discovery; but, for the sake of accuracy, it is neces- 
sary to produce the grounds on which the precedence in the exploration is 
claimed by the English.] 

' ' He was in very bad health when he left Zanzibar, and became so weak on 
the journey that he was carried in a cot all the latter part of it. 

"He remained at Nussewa, on the borders of the Lake, nearly four months. 
On the 16th of March last he left Nussewa to go to the River Rovuma, which 
is crossed about twelve days' journey from Lake Nyassa on the road to Keelwa. 
He evidently intended to return to the Lake from the Rovuma, as he left nearly 
all his baggage in charge of the Sultan of Nussewa, and was only accompanied 
by two negro servants and two porters for his luggage, viz., one man and one 
woman." 

The dispatch is long, and full of details and depositions. Dr. Roscher's 
friend Kingomanga, the Sultan of Nussewa, lives three days from the Lake, and 
probably opposite Kotakota Bay, or even farther south, and is of theWaiao tribe. 

The depositions of the natives are very interesting, as they show conclusively 
that Roscher heard of us. Colonel Rigby thinks that Dr. Roscher had been 
told of the trip we had made to Shirwa, or, as he writes it,Kirwa, "where," 
he remarks, " the natives of Nussewa go for salt." But it is more likely that 
he heard of our arrival at the southern end of Nyassa, where the Shire flows 
from it, where there are immense salt washings, and where we came in contact 
with a party of coast Arabs, who fled by night, and would take the road through 
the Ajawa country, in which Roscher arrived two months later. 



Chap. XX. BISHOP MACKENZIE. 42 1 



CHAPTER XX. 

Encouraging Prospects. — Bishop Mackenzie. — Our Progress down the River 
arrested. — The River flooded in January, 1862. — Mariano resumes his Ca- 
reer of Slave-hunting. — The Governor plays at Hide and Seek with him.— 
Captain Alvez. — Reach the Zambesi. — A Slave-owner's Ideas of his Slaves. 
— Wisdom and Humanity of Napoleon III. — At Luabo. — Arrival of H.M.S. 
Gorgon. — The Pioneer out of Repair. — Captain Wilson proceeds up the 
Shire. — Continuation of the Story of the Bishop's Mission. — He descends 
the Shire in a small Canoe. — Loses Clothing, Medicine, etc. — Fever. — Death 
and Burial. — His Character. — Kindness of the Makololo. — Death of Mr. 
Burrup. — Captain Wilson returns to Shupanga. — The Rev. James Stewart 
examines the Country previous to attempting a Mission by the Free Church 
of Scotland. — Portuguese Policy and Slave-trading are the chief Obstacles 
to any Mission. — Personal Responsibility ignored and Blame put on others. 
— Mrs. Livingstone's Illness, and Death on the 27th of April, 1862. 

We reached the ship on the 8th of November, 1861, in a 
very weak condition, having suffered more from hunger than 
on any previous trip. Heavy rains commenced on the 9th, 
and continued several days ; the river rose rapidly, and be- 
came highly discolored. Bishop Mackenzie came down to 
the ship on the 14th, with some of the Pioneer's men, who 
had been at Magomero for the benefit of their health, and 
also for the purpose of assisting the Mission. The bishop 
appeared to be in excellent spirits, and thought that the fu- 
ture promised fair for peace and usefulness. The Ajawa, 
having been defeated and driven off while we were on the 
Lake, had sent word that they desired to live at peace with 
the English. Many of the Manganja had settled round Ma- 
gomero in order to be under the protection of the bishop, and 
it was hoped that the slave-trade would soon cease in the 
highlands, and the people be left in the secure enjoyment of 
their industry. The Mission, it was also anticipated, might 



422 OUR PROGRESS ARRESTED. Chap. XX. 

n 

soon become, to a considerable degree, self-supporting, and 
raise certain kinds of food, like the Portuguese of Senna and 
Quillimane. Mr. Burrup, an energetic young man, bad ar- 
rived at Chibisa's the day before the bishop, having come up 
the Shire in a canoe. A surgeon and a lay brother followed 
behind in another canoe. The Pioneer's draught being too 
much for the upper part of the Shire, it was not deemed ad- 
visable to bring her up, on the next trip, farther than the 
Ruo ; the bishop, therefore, resolved to explore the country 
from Magomero to the mouth of that river, and to meet the 
ship with his sisters and Mrs. Burrup in January. This was 
arranged before parting, and then the good bishop and Bur- 
rup, whom we were never to meet again, left us ; they gave 
and received three hearty English cheers as they went to the 
shore, and we steamed off. 

The rains ceased on the 14th, and the waters of the Shire 
fell even more rapidly than they had risen. A shoal, twent} 7- 
miles below Chibisa's, checked our farther progress, and we 
lay there five weary weeks, till the permanent rise of the riv- 
er took place. During this detention, with a large marsh on 
each side, the first death occurred in the Expedition, which 
had now been three and a half years in the country. The 
carpenter's mate, a fine, healthy young man, was seized with 
fever. The usual remedies had no effect ; he died suddenly 
while we were at evening prayers, and was buried on shore. 
He came out in the Pioneer, and, with the exception of a 
slight touch of fever at the mouth of the Eovuma, had en- 
joyed perfect health all the time he had been with ns. The 
Portuguese are of opinion that the European who has immu- 
nity from this disease for any length of time after he enters 
the country is more likely to be cut off by it when it does 
come than the man who has it frequently at first. 



Chap. XX. RETURN OF MARIANO. 423 

The rains became pretty general toward the close of De- 
cember, and the Shire was in flood in the beginning of Janu- 
ary, 1862. At our wooding-place, a mile above the Kuo, the 
water was three feet higher than it was when we were here 
in June ; and on the night of the 6th it rose eighteen inches 
more, and swept down an immense amount of brushwood and 
logs, which swarmed with* beetles, and the two kinds of shells 
which are common all over the African continent. Natives 
in canoes were busy spearing fish in the meadows and creeks, 
and appeared to be taking them in great numbers. Spur- 
winged geese, and others of the knob-nosed species, took ad- 
vantage of the low gardens being flooded, and came to pilfer 
the beans. As we passed the Kuo on the 7th, and saw noth- 
ing of the bishop, we concluded that he had heard from his 
surgeon of our detention, and had deferred his journey. He 
arrived there five days after, on the 12th. 

We heard at Mboma's village that the notorious rebel-rob- 
ber and murderer, Mariano, had been allowed to return from 
Mozambique, and was at his old trade again of kidnapping 
the Manganja, and selling them to the people of Quillimane 
as slaves. He had already desolated a large portion of the 
right bank, and the people of this village were living in con- 
stant dread of a visit from his armed marauders. On coming 
to the Zambesi, we found that the Portuguese had lately made 
a station on an island opposite the mouth of the Shire. Cap- 
tain Alvez — Mozinga, or Big Gun, as the natives called him 
— was the officer in command, and came on board after we 
dropped anchor. The governor had desired him to assure us 
that the occupation of the island was only temporary, and 
solely in consequence of Mariano's escape and rebellion. 

It appears that this half-caste rebel, notwithstanding all his 
notorious robberies and murders, and his actual rebellion and 



424 GOVERNOR OF QUILLIMANE. Chap. XX. 

war, had been tried at Mozambique, and had been let off with 
the mild sentence of imprisonment for three years and a fine. 
Not having money enough with him to pay the fine, the Mo- 
zambique authorities considerately allowed him to go back to 
Quillimane to collect some debts which he asserted were due 
to him ; but, when he got there, it was found that his debts 
were due somewhere up the country. His Quillimane cred- 
itors, however, most feelingly petitioned the government to 
allow Mariano to go thither, in order to obtain ivory to pay 
both debts and fine. Permission was graciously given, and 
he was also allowed to take several hundreds of muskets and 
much ammunition ; but, instead of collecting ivory ,<jjie return- 
ed to his own people up the Shire, and betook himself at once 
to his former course of robbery, murder, and kidnapping, and 
set the Portuguese authority at defiance. The Governor of 
Quillimane then declared war against his old enemy, and with 
all his available soldiers and slaves, in a fleet of boats and 
canoes, sailed up the Shire to capture the rebel, but could not 
find him — so sailed down again. The whole thing had the 
appearance — to the uncharitable, who knew that nothing 
could be done in a district without the knowledge of the gov- 
ernor — of Mariano's having been allowed to run away with a 
large assortment of arms and ammunition out of a small ham- 
let, where every one, by means of his slaves, knows the affairs 
of every one else. It is true the governor ran after him, but 
at the pace one does after a child in play, and, of course, could 
not catch him. A captain was afterward sent across the coun- 
try with a force, and was more fortunate than the governor, 
for he reached Mariano. Unluckily, however, instead of cap- 
turing the rebel, the rebel captured him, in a night attack it 
was said, with all his ammunition and a number of his men. 
The captain, according to the account of his brother officers, 



Chap. XX. CAPTAIN ALVEZ. 425 

was allowed to depart, after receiving a present of ivory. To 
us this was incredible, but it is mentioned to show the way 
that these men, who have been convicts, speak of each other. 

Captain Alvez was suffering from fever, and had been ever 
since he came to this low, marshy place. „ The island would 
be under water, he said, if the river rose two feet higher, 
which it was extremely likely to do. The lonely life of a 
solitary officer, living with a number of debased black sol- 
diers, on such a spot as this, is something frightful to think 
of. It is next door to imprisonment, if not to solitary confine- 
ment ; and this was the lot of a brave artillery officer, who 
was sent here for some political offense, and who had done all 
the hard fighting with the rebels for a number of years back. 
While he who crushed out the rebellion was living thus, Ma- 
riano, the rebel, was reported for the last three years to have 
been living sumptuously in the capital of the province, and 
even dining at the tables of the highest in the land. Seeing 
that this sentence of imprisonment at Mozambique was car- 
ried out so mildly as not to amount to confinement at all, it 
is not to be wondered at that men's tongues should speak 
hard things against the governor general, and that, though, of 
course, it can not be actually known, bribery should be open- 
ly declared to have taken place. We know nothing more 
than the probability and general report, which may be false. 
We never met Mozinga again ; he succumbed in a few months 
to fever. 

After paying our Senna men, as they wished to go home, 
we landed them here. All were keen traders, and had invest- 
ed largely in native iron hoes, axes, and ornaments. Many 
of the hoes and spears had been taken from the slaving par- 
ties whose captives we liberated, for on these occasions our 
Senna friends were always uncommonly zealous and active. 



426 KEACH THE ZAMBESI. Chap. XX. 

The remainder had been purchased with the old clothes we 
had given them, and their store of hippopotamus meat : they 
had no fears of losing them, or of being punished for aiding 
us. The system in which they had been trained had eradi- 
cated the idea of personal responsibility from their minds. 
The Portuguese slaveholders would blame the English alone, 
they said ; they were our servants at the time. No white 
man on board could purchase so cheaply as these men could. 
Many a time had their eloquence persuaded a native trader to 
sell for a bit of dirty worn cloth things for which he had, but 
a little before, refused twice the amount of clean new calico. 
" Scissors," being troubled with a cough at night, received a 
present of a quilted coverlet, which had seen a good deal of 
service. A few days afterward, a good chance of investing in 
hoes offering itself, he ripped off both sides, tore them into a 
dozen pieces, and purchased about a dozen hoes with them. 

We entered the Zambesi on the 11th of January, and 
steamed down toward the coast, taking the side on which we 
had come up ; but the channel had changed to the other side 
during the summer, as it sometimes does, and we soon ground- 
ed. A Portuguese gentleman, formerly a lieutenant in the 
army, and now living on Sangwisa, one of the islands of the 
Zambesi, came over with his slaves to aid us in getting the 
ship off. He said frankly that his people were all great 
thieves, and we must be on our guard not to leave any thing 
about. He next made a short speech to his men, told them 
he knew what thieves they were, but implored them not to 
steal from us, as we would give them a present of cloth when 
the work was done. " The natives of this country," he re- 
marked to us, "think only of three things — what they shall 
eat and drink, how many wives they can have, and what they 
may steal from their master, if not how they may murder 



Chap. XX. YOUNG WOMEN SOLD. 427 

him." He always slept with a loaded musket by his side. 
This opinion may apply to slaves, but decidedly does not, in 
our experience, apply to freemen. We paid his men for help- 
ing us, and believe that even they, being paid, stole nothing 
from us. Our friend farms pretty extensively the large isl- 
and called Sangwisa — lent him for nothing by Senhor Ferrao 
— and raises large quantities of mapira and beans, and also 
beautiful white rice, grown from seed brought a few years 
ago from South Carolina. He furnished us with some, which 
was very acceptable ; for, though not in absolute want, we 
were living on- beans, salt pork, and fowls, all the biscuit and 
flour on board having been expended. 

We fully expected that the owners of the captives we had 
liberated would show their displeasure, at least by their 
tongues ; but they seemed ashamed ; only one ventured a re- 
mark, and he, in the course of common conversation, said, 



ou 



with a smile, " You took the governor's slaves, didn't y 
"Yes, we did free several gangs that we met in the Manganja 
country." The Portuguese of Tette, from the governor down- 
ward, were extensively engaged in slaving. The trade is part- 
ly internal and partly external : they send some of the cap- 
tives, and those bought, into the interior, up the Zambesi; 
some of these we actually met on their way up the river. 
The young women were sold there for ivory : an ordinary- 
looking one brought two arrobas, sixty-four pounds weight, 
and an extra beauty brought twice that amount. The men 
and boys were kept as carriers, to take the ivory down from 
the interior to Tette, or were retained on farms on the Zam- 
besi, ready for export if a slaver should call : of this last mode 
of slaving we were witnesses also. The slaves were sent 
down the river chained, and in large canoes. This went on 
openly at Tette, and more especially so while the French 



428 WISDOM OF NAPOLEON III. Chap. XX. 

"Free Emigration" system was in full operation. This double 
mode of disposing of the captives pays better than the single 
system of sending them down to the c6ast for exportation. 
One merchant at Tette, with whom we were well acquainted, 
sent into the interior three hundred Manganja women to be 
gold for ivory, and another sent a hundred and fifty. The 
process by which the island of Bourbon was supplied with 
slaves was carried on with even greater effrontery than the 
Manganja raids. The commandant at Tette, having found 
that a cargo of slaves had been taken down the river by a 
woman of bad character, for form's sake sent an officer after 
her. He followed, overtook her, but returned without her. 
When spoken to on the subject, the commandant said, with 
an air of triumph, " The English can not now interfere, while 
we have the French flag to protect us." And this flag did 
protect slaving till May, 1864. Of all the benefits which the 
reign of Napoleon III. has conferred on his kind, none does 
more credit to his wisdom and humanity than his having stop- 
ped this wretched system. As much was done as lay in his 
power, in the way of regulating the system of abstraction of 
labor from Africa, by the appointment of officers to prevent 
abuses in its working ; but, in spite of every precaution, the 
" engagee system" became neither more nor less than the 
abominable slave-trade in all its horrors, not so much by 
French agency as by that of Portuguese and half-castes. 
Until the people are enlightened, every attempt of the kind 
must always promote the slave-trade, and nothing else. 

We anchored on the Great Luabo mouth of the Zambesi, 
because wood was much more easily obtained there than at 
the Kongone. On the 30th H. M. S. Gorgon arrived, towing 
the brig which brought Mrs. Livingstone, some ladies about 
to join their relatives in the Universities' Mission, and the 



Chap. XX. ARRIVAL OF THE GORGOX. 429 

twenty-four sections of a new iron steamer intended for the 
navigation of Lake Nyassa. The Pioneer steamed out, and 
towed the brig into the Kongone harbor. The new steamer 
was called the Lady of the Lake, or the Lady Nyassa, and as 
much as could be carried of her in one trip was placed, by 
the help of the officers and men of the Gorgon, on board the 
Pioneer, and the two large paddle-box boats of H. M.'s ship. 
We steamed off for the Euo on the 10th of February, having 
on board Captain Wilson, with a number of his officers and 
men, to help us to discharge the cargo. Our progress up was 
distressingly slow. The river was in flood, and we had a 
three-knot current against us in many places. The engines 
of the Pioneer were of the best quality, but had been entirely 
neglected by the engineer — the packing not having been re- 
newed during twenty months. These causes delayed us six 
months in the delta, instead of, as we anticipated, only six 
days ; for, finding it impossible to carry the sections up to the 
Euo without great loss of time, it was thought best to land 
them at Shupanga, and, putting the hull of the Lady ISTyassa 
together there, to tow her up to the foot of the Murchison 
Cataracts. 

A few days before the Pioneer reached Shupanga, Captain 
Wilson, seeing the hopeless state of our engines, generously 
resolved to hasten with the Mission ladies up to those who, 
we thought, were anxiously awaiting their arrival, and there- 
fore started in his gig for the Euo, taking Miss Mackenzie, 
Mrs. Burrup, and his surgeon, Dr. Eamsay. They were ac- 
companied by Dr. Kirk and Mr. Sewell, paymaster of the 
Gorgon, in the whale-boat of the Lady ISTyassa. As our slow- 
paced-launch, Ma-Eobert, had formerly gone up to the foot of 
the cataracts in nine days steaming, it was supposed that the 
boats might easily reach the expected meeting-place at the 



430 CAPTAIN WILSON UP THE SHIRE. Chap. XX. 

Kuo in a week ; but the Shire was now in flood, and in its 
most rapid state ; and they were longer in getting up about 
half the distance, than it was hoped they would be in the 
whole navigable^part of the river. They could hear nothing 
of the bishop from the chief of the island, Malo, at the mouth 
of the Kuo. " No white man had ever come to his village," he 
said. They proceeded on to Chibisa's, suffering terribly from 
musquitoes at night. Their toil in stemming the rapid current 
made them estimate the distance, by the windings, as nearer 
300 than 200 miles. The Makololo who had remained at Chi- 
bisa's told them the sad news of the death of the good bishop 
and of Mr. Burrup. Other information received there awak- 
ened fresh anxiety on behalf of the survivors ; so, leaving the 
ladies with Dr. Eamsay and the Makololo, Captain Wilson and 
Dr. Kirk went up the hills, in hopes of being able to render 
assistance, and on the way they met some of the Mission party 
at Soche's. The excessive fatigue that our friends had under- 
gone in the voyage up to Chibisa's in no wise deterred them 
from this farther attempt for the benefit of their countrymen ; 
but the fresh labor, with diminished ration?, was too much for 
their strength. They were reduced to a diet of native beans 
and an occasional fowl. Both became very ill of fever, Cap- 
tain Wilson so dangerously that his fellow-sufferer lost all 
hopes of his recovery. His strong, able-bodied cockswain did 
good service in cheerfully carrying his much-loved command- 
er, and they managed to return to the boat, and brought the 
two bereaved and sorrow-stricken ladies back to the Pioneer. 
We learned that the bishop, wishing to find a shorter route 
clown to the Shire, had sent two men to explore the country 
between Magomero and the junction of the Kuo; and in De- 
cember, Messrs. Proctor and Scudamore, with a number of 
Manganja carriers, left Magomero for the same purpose. They 
were to go close to Mount Choro, and then skirt the Elephant 



Chap. XX. ATTACK ON THE MISSIONARIES. 43 1 

Marsh, with Mount Clarendon on their left. Their guides 
seem to have led them away to the east instead of south ; to 
the upper waters of the Euo in the Shirwa valley, instead of 
to its mouth. Entering an Anguro slave-trading village, they 
soon began to suspect that the people meant mischief, and just 
before sunset a woman told some of their men that if they 
slept there they would all be killed. On their preparing to 
leave, the Anguro followed them and shot their arrows at the 
retreating party. Two of the carriers were captured, and all 
the goods were taken by these robbers. An arrow-head 
struck deep into the stock of Proctor's gun ; and the two mis- 
sionaries, barely escaping with their lives, swam a deep river 
at night, and returned to Magomero famished and exhausted. 
The wives of the captive carriers came to the bishop day 
after day weeping and imploring him to rescue their husbands 
from slavery. The men had been caught while in his serv- 
ice ; no one else could be entreated ; there was no public law 
nor any power superior to his own, to which an appeal could 
be made ; for in him Church and State were, in the disorgan- 
ized state of the country, virtually united. It seemed to him 
to be clearly his duty to try and rescue these kidnapped mem- 
bers of the Mission family. He accordingly invited the vet- 
eran Makololo to go with him on this somewhat hazardous 
errand. Nothing could have been proposed to them which 
they would have liked better, and they went with alacrity to 
eat the sheep of the Anguro, only regretting that the enemy 
did not keep cattle as well. Had the matter been left entire- 
ly in their hands, they would have made a clean sweep of that 
part of the country ; but the bishop restrained them, and went 
in an open manner, thus commending the measure to all the 
natives, as one of justice. This deliberation, however, gave 
the delinquents a chance of escape. - 

* On the way the bishop is said to have had an opportunity of correcting a 



432 THE MISSIONARIES SUCCESSFUL. Chap. XX. 

The missionaries were successful; the offending village was 
burned, and a few sheep and goats were secured, which could 
not be considered other than a very mild punishment for the 
offense committed ; the head man, Muana-somba, afraid to re- 
tain the prisoners any longer, forthwith liberated them, and 
they returned to their homes. This incident took place at 
the time we were at the Euo and during the rains, and proved 
very trying to the health of the missionaries ; they were fre- 
quently wetted, and had hardly any food but roasted maize. 
Mr. Scudamore was never well afterward. Directly on their 
return to Magomero, the bishop and Mr. Burrup, both suffer- 
ing from diarrhoea in consequence of wet, hunger, and expo- 
sure, started for Chibisa's to go down to the Euo by the Shire. 
So fully did the bishop expects renewal of the soaking wet 
from which he had just returned, that on leaving Magomero 
he walked through the stream. The rivulets were so swollen 
that it took five days to do a journey that would otherwise 
have occupied only two days and a half. 

None of the Manganja being willing to take them down 
the river during the flood, three Makololo canoe-men agreed 
to go with them. After paddling till near sunset, they de- 
cided to stop and sleep on shore ; but the musquitoes were so 
numerous that they insisted on going on again ; the bishop, 
being a week behind the time he had engaged to be at the 
Euo, reluctantly consented, and in the darkness the canoe was 
upset in one of the strong eddies or whirlpools, which sudden- 
ly boil up in flood-time near the outgoing branches of the riv- 
er ; clothing, medicines, tea, coffee, and sugar were all lost. 
Wet and weary, and tormented by musquitoes, they lay in 

slight geographical mistake made by Dr. Livingstone when Lake Shirwa was 
discovered. A white vapor, at that time renting on the rich valley at the south- 
ern end of the lake, had led to the inference that the lake stretched a little far- 
ther south than it actually does. 



Chap. XX. DEATH OF BISHOP MACKENZIE. 433 

the canoe till morning dawned, and then proceeded to Malo, 
an island at the mouth of the Kuo, where the bishop was at 
once seized with fever. 

Had they been in their usual health, they would doubtless 
have pushed on to Shupanga or to the ship ; but fever rapid- 
ly prostrates the energies, and induces a drowsy stupor, from 
which, if not roused by medicine, the patient gradually sinks 
into the sleep of death. Still mindful, however, of his office, 
the bishop consoled himself by thinking that he might gain 
the friendship of the chief, which would be of essential serv- 
ice to him in his future labors. That heartless man, however, 
probably suspicious of all foreigners from the knowledge he 
had acquired of white slave-traders, wanted to turn the dying- 
bishop out of the hut, as he required it for his corn, but yield- 
ed to the expostulations of the Makololo. Day after day for 
three weeks did these faithful fellows remain beside his mat 
on the floor, till, without medicine or even proper food, he 
died. They dug his grave on the edge of the deep dark for- 
est where the natives buried their dead. Mr. Burrup, himself 
far gone with dysentery, staggered from the hut, and, as in 
the dusk of evening they committed the bishop's body to the 
grave, repeated from memory portions of our beautiful serv- 
ice for the Burial of the Dead — " earth to earth, ashes to ash- 
es, dust to dust ; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection 
of the dead through our Lord Jesus Christ." And in this sad 
way ended the earthly career of one of whom it can safely be 
said that for unselfish goodness of heart, and earnest devotion 
to the noble work he had undertaken, none of the commend- 
ations of his friends can exceed the reality. The grave in 
which his body rests is about a hundred yards from the con- 
fluence of the Buo, on the left bank of the Shire, and oppo- 
site the island of Malo. The Makololo then took Mr. Burrup 

E E 



434 CAPTAIN WILSON AT SHUPANGA. Chap. XX. 

up in the canoe as far as they could, and, making a litter of 
branches, carried him themselves, or got others to carry him, 
all the way back to his countrymen at Magomero. They hur- 
ried him on lest he should die in their hands, and blame be 
attached to them. Soon after his return he expired, from the 
disease which was on him when he started to meet his wife. 

Captain Wilson arrived at Shupanga on the 11th of March, 
having been three weeks on the Shire. On the 15th the Pi- 
oneer steamed down to the Kongone. The Gorgon had been 
driven out to sea in a gale, and had gone to Johanna for pro- 
visions, and it was the 2d of April before she returned. It 
was fortunate for us that she had obtained a supply, as our 
provisions were exhausted, and we had to buy some from the 
master of the brig. The Gorgon left for the Cape on the 4th, 
taking all, except one, of the Mission party who had come in 
January. We take this opportunity of expressing our heart- 
felt gratitude to the gallant Captain Wilson and his officers 
for innumerable acts of kindness and hearty co-operation. 
Our warmest thanks are also due to Captain E. B. Oldtleld and 
the other officers, from the admiral downward, and we beg to 
assure them that nothing could be more encouraging to us in 
our difficulties and trials than the knowledge that we pos- 
sessed their friendship and sympathy in our labors. 

The Eev. James Stewart, of the Free Church of Scotland, 
arrived in the Gorgon. He had wisely come out to inspect 
the country before deciding on the formation of a Mission in 
the interior. To this object he devoted many months of earn- 
est labor. This Mission was intended to embrace both the 
industrial and the religious element ; and, as the route by the 
Zambesi and Shire forms the only one at present known, with 
but a couple of days' land journey to the highlands, which 
stretch to an unknown distance into the continent, and as no 



Chap. XX. REV. JAMES STEWART. 435 

jealousy was likely to be excited in the mind of a man of 
Bishop Mackenzie's enlarged views — there being, moreover, 
room for hundreds of missions — we gladly extended the little 
aid in our power to an envoy from the energetic and most 
respectable body above mentioned, but recommended him to 
examine the field with his own eyes. 

During our subsequent detention at Shupanga he proceed- 
ed as far up the Shire as the Upper Cataracts, and saw the 
mere remnants of that dense population which we at first had 
found living in peace and plenty, but which was now scatter- 
ed and destroyed by famine and slave-hunting. The land, 
which both before and after we found so fair and fruitful, was 
burned up by a severe drought ; in fact, it was at its very 
worst. With most praiseworthy energy, and in spite of occa- 
sional attacks of fever, he then ascended the Zambesi as far as 
Kebrabasa, and, what may be of interest to some, compared it, 
in parts, to the Danube. His estimate of the highlands would 
naturally be lower than ours. The main drawbacks in his 
opinion, however, were the slave-trade, and the power allowed 
the effete Portuguese of shutting up the country from all ex- 
cept a few convicts of their own nation. The time of his com- 
ing was inopportune ; the disasters which, from inexperience, 
had befallen the Mission of the Universities, had a depressing 
effect on the minds of many at home, and rendered a new at- 
tempt unadvisable ; though, had the Scotch perseverance and 
energy been introduced, it is highly probable that they would 
have reacted most beneficially on the zeal of our English 
brethren, and desertion would never have been heard of. Aft- 
er examining the country, Mr. Stewart descended the Zam- 
besi in the beginning of the following year, and proceeded 
homeward with his report by Mozambique and the Cape. 

On the 7th of April we had only one man fit for duty ; all the 



436 OBSTACLES TO A MISSION. Chap. XX. 

rest were down with fever, or with the vile spirit secretly sold 
to them by the Portuguese officer of customs, in spite of our 
earnest request to him to refrain from the pernicious traffic. 

We started on the 11th for Shupanga with another load of 
the Lady Nyassa. As we steamed up the Delta, we observed 
many of the natives wearing strips of palm-leaf, the signs of 
sickness and mourning ; for they too suffer from fever. This 
is the unhealthy season ; the rains are over, and the hot sun 
draws up malaria from the decayed vegetation ; disease seem- 
ed peculiarly severe this year. On our way up we met Mr. 
Waller, who had come from Magomero for provisions ; the 
missionaries were suffering severely from want of food ; the 
liberated people were starving, and dying of diarrhoea and 
loathsome sores. The Ajawa, stimulated in their slave raids 
by supplies of ammunition and cloth from the Portuguese, 
had destroyed the large crops of the past year ; a drought had 
followed, and little or no food could be bought. With his 
usual energy, Mr. Waller hired canoes, loaded them with 
stores, and took them up the long, weary way to Chibisa's. 
Before he arrived he was informed that the Mission of the 
Universities, now deprived of its brave leader, had fled from 
the highlands down to the Low Shire Valley. This appeared 
to us, who knew the danger of leading a sedentary life, the 
greatest mistake they could have made, and was the result of 
no other counsel or responsibility than their own. Waller 
would have reascended at once to the higher altitude, but va- 
rious objections stood in the way. The loss of poor Scuda- 
more and Dickinson, in this low-lying situation, but added to 
the regret that the highlands had not received a fair trial. 

When the news of the bishop's unfortunate collisions with 
the natives, and of his untimely end, reached England, much 
blame was imputed to him. The policy which, with the form- 



Chap. XX. THE BISHOP'S POLICY. 437 

al sanction of all his companions, he had adopted, being di- 
rectly contrary to the advice which Dr. Livingstone tendered, 
and to the assurances of the peaceable nature of the Mission 
which the doctor had given to the natives, a friendly disap- 
proval of a bishop's engaging in war was ventured on, when 
we met him at Chibisa's in November. But when we found 
his conduct regarded with so much bitterness in England, 
whether from a disposition to " stand by the down man," or 
from having an intimate knowledge of the peculiar circum- 
stances of the country in which he was placed, or from the 
thorough confidence wh'ich intimacy caused us to repose in 
his genuine piety, and devout service of God, we came to 
think much more leniently of his proceedings than his assail- 
ants did. He never seemed to doubt but that he had done 
his duty, and throughout he had always been supported by 
his associates. One of them subsequently, and in a weak mo- 
ment, ignoring personal responsibility, rested all the blame on 
Dr. Livingstone ; and the gentleman who was designated as 
the bishop's successor declared in public meetings at Cam- 
bridge and elsewhere, in spite of the proof to the contrary in 
Bishop Mackenzie's own journal, "that the warlike measures 
of the Mission were the consequences of following Dr. Living- 
stone's advice." The question whether a bishop, in the event 
of his flock being torn from his bosom, may make war to res- 
cue them, requires serious consideration. It seems to narrow 
itself into whether a Christian man may lawfully use the civil 
power or the sword at all in defensive war, as police, or oth- 
erwise. We would do almost any thing to avoid a collision 
with degraded natives ; but in case of an invasion — our blood 
boils at the very thought of our wives, daughters, or sisters 
being touched — we, as men with human feelings, would un- 
hesitatingly fight to the death with all the fury in our power. 



438 DEATH OF MRS. LIVINGSTONE. Chap. XX. 

The good bishop was as intensely averse to using arms be- 
fore he met the slave-hunters as any man in England. In 
the course he pursued he may have made a mistake, but it is 
a mistake which very few Englishmen, on meeting bands of 
helpless captives, or members of his family in bonds, would 
have failed to commit likewise. 

During unhealthy April, the fever was more severe in Shu- 
panga and Mazaro than usual. We had several cases on 
board ; they were quickly cured, but, from our being in the 
Delta, as quickly returned. About the middle of the month 
Mrs. Livingstone was prostrated by this disease ; and it was 
accompanied by obstinate vomiting. Nothing, is yet known 
that can allay this distressing symptom, which of course ren- 
ders medicine of no avail, as it is instantly rejected. She re- 
ceived whatever medical aid could be rendered from Dr. Kirk, 
but became unconscious, and her eyes were closed in the sleep 
of death as the sun set on the evening of the Christian Sab- 
bath, the 27th of April, 1862. A coffin was made during the 
night, a grave was dug next day under the branches of the 
great baobab -tree, and with sympathizing hearts the little 
band of his countrymen assisted the bereaved husband in bur- 
ying his dead. At his request, the Eev. James Stewart read 
the burial service ; and the seamen kindly volunteered to 
mount guard for some nights at the spot where her body 
rests in hope. Those who are not aware how this brave, 
good, English wife made a delightful home at Kolobeng, a 
thousand miles inland from the Cape, and as the daughter of 
Moffat and a Christian lady exercised most beneficial influ- 
ence over the rude tribes of the interior, may wonder that she 
should have braved the dangers and toils of this down-trod- 
den land. She knew them all, and, in the disinterested and 
dutiful attempt to renew her labors, was called to her rest in- 
stead. " Fiat Domine, voluntas tuaf" 



Chap. XXI. STAKT FOR TETTE. 441 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Dr. Kirk and Charles Livingstone proceed to Tette. — Belchior's Wars.— Gov- 
ernor Almeida's praiseworthy Interdict. — Connivance of the Governor Gen- 
eral at the Slave-trade. — Masters and Slaves. — No love lost. — Launch of the 
Lady Nyassa. — Native Speculations on the Buoyancy of Iron. — Freedom of 
Discussion on certain Subjects. — Birds at Play. — Our new Quarter-master. 
— Start of the Lady Nyassa deferred. — Portuguese "prohibitive" permission 
for Trading. — Up the Rovuma in Boats. — Inhabitants. — Mats. — Tsetse. — 
Zigzag Channel. — A queer Fish. — Canoe Rivalry. — The Englishman in Af- 
rica. — An old Lady opens the Market. — Men with Pelele. — Mabiha. — Ma- 
koa. — Slave Route to Kilwa. — Life on a Sand-bank. — Unprovoked Hostility. 
— Hives and Honey. — Coal found. — A jolly young Waterwoman. — Our 
Progress stopped by rocky Narrows. — Sources of the Rovuma. — Crocodiles. 
— Their Eggs. — Hunting the Senze. — Back again to the Pioneer. 

On the 5th of May Dr. Kirk and Charles Livingstone start- 
ed in the boat for Tette, in order to see the property of the 
Expedition brought down in canoes. They took four Mazaro 
canoe-men to manage the boat, and a white sailor to cook for 
them ; but, unfortunately, he caught fever the very day after 
leaving the ship, and was ill most of the trip ; so they had to 
cook for themselves, and to take care of him besides. The 
natives behaved remarkably well, and were very cleanly in 
their habits, bathing every day after sunset, although the 
weather was rather chilly. If a little food was given to one, 
according almost to universal custom he shared it with the 
others, although often there was not more than a mouthful 
for each. They preferred punting to paddling, and chose, in 
going up the river, the parts that had from two to four feet 
of water, instead of the deep channel where the current is 
strong. They kept admirable time with their poles, raising 
them, bringing them down, pushing, and giving the final 
shove all at the same instant. The helm had hardly to be 



442 CANOE-MEN'S SONG. Chap. XXI. 

touched at all, so well did they keep the boat on her course. 
Many of their canoe songs are very fine ; some are peculiarly 
plaintive, like the one which appears to be a lament over a 
dying chief. There being but little wind during the first 
day, the sail could not be used ; but toward sunset a pleasant 
breeze sprang up, and sail was set. The canoe-men were of 
course much pleased to see the boat moving on without their 
exertions. The Makololo of our first party always maintain- 
ed that a sailing-boat was the perfection of navigation — it was 
vastly superior to a steamer, because no wood had to be cut 
— and you had merely to sit still, and let the wind drive you 
along. After dark the wind increased, the boat swept swiftly 
through the water; the men, who are of an excitable temper- 
ament, felt the influence, and began an extemporary and very 
energetic song. As the breeze freshened, the boat dashed 
through the waves; then, wild with excitement, the men 
sprang to their feet, and sang still louder, gesticulating with 
might and main. Suddenly the career of song ceased — the 
singers were sprawling on their backs— the boat was on a 
sand-bank. 

On an island opposite Shiramba the party found a large 
number of fugitive Manganja, who had fled from the war on 
the main land. A man banished from Portugal, called Bel- 
chior, who had married a sister of the half-caste chief below 
Tette, and had settled near Lupata, was encamped on an isl- 
and in Shigogo. They were challenged as they sailed past it 
after dark. The fife and drums called to arms. " The En- 
glish! the English!" our men answered, and no molestation en- 
sued. Chibisa, he told them, had sent an insulting message 
to him, so he attacked him, and, with seventy men armed 
with muskets, drove him from his principal village near the 
Zambesi, and burned it. Even private persons imitate mili- 



Chap. XXI. GOVERNOR ALMEIDA. 443 

tary manners, and make what they call war and peace, as if 
no other authority existed. At a subsequent period this ad- 
venturer forced Chibisa to flee to the new Mission-station op- 
posite Dakanamoio Island, and threatened to follow him thith- 
er. To prevent this, Dr. Livingstone applied to the Govern- 
or of Tette, Antonio Tavares d' Almeida, and we have much 
pleasure in stating that his excellency had already laid an in- 
junction on Belchior not to proceed with his intended foray. 
This very creditable order had preceded the application. 

Dr. Kirk and Charles Livingstone arrived at Tette on the 
17th, and found its wonted dull monotony agreeably broken 
by the marriage of the governor's daughter to one of the offi- 
cers. The slaves were celebrating the joyful event in the 
usual way, by drinking, drumming, dancing, singing, and fir- 
ing off muskets. Our companions were hospitably received 
by the governor, which was more than they had reason to 
expect, after having so recently freed his slave-gangs in the 
Manganja country. His excellency alluded to the subject 
one evening, remarking to Dr. Kirk that he had received from 
his brother, the governor general, a dispatch, saying that as 
the slave-trade was legal under Portuguese law, if any slave- 
party, out of the Portuguese territory, was attacked, they were 
to resist force by force ; in plain words, they were to fight 
the next time we attempted to rescue the kidnapped Mangan- 
ja. This is mentioned, not that it is in any way remarkable 
for a representative of the Portuguese crown to connive at 
slaving, but because the Governor General Almeida, by speak- 
ing English and professing to have an intense desire to sup- 
press the slave-trade, gained a character for uprightness among 
the officers of H. M. cruisers which none of his countrymen 
would for a moment indorse. On finding afterward that his 
less powerful brother at Tette had unwittingly revealed to us 



444 OFFICIAL CONNIVANCE AT SLAVEKY. Chap. XXI. 

the real sentiments of the big brother at Mozambique, his ex- 
cellency could not conceal a little, perhaps excusable, chagrin, 
though he must have known that, living behind the scenes, 
we had never been misled by his English palavers, and that 
we should have rejoiced had it been possible to have held him 
in higher esteem. Some of the slaves, captured by his broth- 
er's agents, are sent inland for ivory, and others kept on farms, 
whence he and every one else know they will be shipped by 
means of large canoes whenever an opportunity occurs. This 
inland slave-trade feeds the foreign one ; and, if Portuguese 
legislation has any meaning, the whole thing is forbidden. If, 
as the laws profess, they wish to get rid of slavery, no more 
slaves can be made, unless the laws be only enacted to please 
the English, and gratify the self-esteem of the legislators. 

The Portuguese government is really famous for passing 
good laws in Lisbon, and no less for allowing those respecting 
slavery to remain a dead letter. It has been decreed that 
slavery is to be abolished in this province in 1878, and the 
government slaves to be free in the year 1864. An officer 
told us that they were working the government slaves tre- 
mendously, making streets and tiles, in order to get all the 
work they could out of them before they were set free. 

Tette is very much improved since the present governor 
came into office. Two good roads or streets have been made, 
which is something new for this country. The governor him- 
self is 1 nearly walked off his feet looking after them. There 
are some hundreds of black soldiers in the town, who are very 
much better clothed than a tithe of the number used to be in 
former years. We were told, on what seemed good authority, 
that Tette now costs the home government £3000 a year, and 
yields an annual revenue of £300. The ivory-trade has de- 
clined very materially, from the elephants being nearly all 



Chap. XXL MEN FLOGGED. 445 

killed, or driven off from the part of the country formerly 
hunted. 

The canoes hired at Mazaro for the return voyage were at 
Tette when we arrived. They had brought up stores for the 
Portuguese government, and had been accompanied by an 
officer who had a number of the men flogged, though they 
were freemen, because he said they we,re lazy, and lost time 
in coming up. The backs of the poor fellows were badly cut. 
Public law exists in theory ; in practice punishment is often 
inflicted at the caprice of individuals. On one occasion we 
sent a couple of the Shupanga thieves, caught with the booty 
on them, to the nearest official ; we received a note next day 
asking what punishment was to be inflicted ; we preferred let- 
ting the criminals go free to giving a sentence. Between men 
of equal standing, a threat is often made of using the musket, 
by the name of the "minister of justice." The canoe-men 
receive their pay and food for the trip before starting. When 
the canoes are heavily laden and the water low, they often 
eat up all their food before they reach Tette, and have none 
left for the return passage, unless they purchase more with 
their wages. This was the case with our men. Food was 
cheap, and, wishing to make them strong for their work, we 
gave them considerably more than they were accustomed to 
receive, with a pig and a goat besides, and they worked re- 
markably well. Starting, of their own accord, at the first dawn 
tff day, and keeping on till dusk, they resolutely kept up with 
the boat, and reached Shupanga in four days and three quar- 
ters. The merchants complain much of the dishonesty of the 
canoe-men, and sometimes they actually do make off with a 
whole cargo of cloth, and no punishment can reach them. One 
thing is certain, there is no love lost between these parties. 

We now proceeded with preparations for the launch of the 



446 ANNOYED BY THIEVES. Chap. XXI. 

Lady Nyassa. Ground was leveled on the bank at Shupanga 
for the purpose of arranging the compartments in order : she 
was placed on palm-trees which were brought from a place 
lower down the river for ways, and the engineer and his as- 
sistants were soon busily engaged; about a fortnight after 
they were all brought from Kongone, the sections were screw- 
ed together. The blacks are more addicted to stealing where 
slavery exists than elsewhere. We were annoyed by thieves, 
who carried off the iron screw-bolts, but were gratified to find 
that strychnine saved us, from the man-thief as well as the 
hyena- thief. A hyena was killed by it, and after the natives 
saw the dead animal and knew how we had destroyed it, they 
concluded that it was not safe to ■ steal from men who pos- 
sessed a medicine so powerful. The half-caste who kept Shu- 
panga-house, said he wished to have some to give to the Zu- 
lus, of whom he was mortally afraid, and to whom he had to 
pay an unwilling tribute. 

The Pioneer made several trips to the Kongone, and re- 
turned with the last load on the 12th of June. On the 23d 
the Lady Nyassa was safely launched, the work of putting her 
together having been interrupted by fever and dysentery, and 
many other causes which it would only weary the reader to 
narrate in detail. Natives from all parts of the country came 
to see the launch, most of them quite certain that, being made 
of iron, she must go to the bottom as soon as she entered the 
water. Earnest discussions had taken place among them witli 
regard to the propriety of using iron for ship-building. The 
majority affirmed that it would never answer. They said, 
" If we put a hoe into the water, or the smallest bit of iron, 
it sinks immediately. How, then, can such a mass of iron 
float? it must go to the bottom." The minority answered 
that this might be true with them, but white men had medi- 



Chap. XXI. GENESIS OF THE TSETSE. 447 

cine for every thing. " They could even make a woman, all 
except the speaking ; look at that one on the figure-head of 
the vessel." The unbelievers were astonished, and could 
hardly believe their eyes when they saw the ship float lightly 
and gracefully on the river instead of going to the bottom, as 
they so confidently predicted. "Truly," they said, "these 
men have powerful medicine." 

Our distinguished countryman, Professor Owen, recom- 
mended our attention to be directed to the genesis of the 
tsetse, in order to discover a means for the extirpation of this 
pest. We frequently inquired of the different tribes if they 
could help us in our inquiries ; and one of the Makololo re- 
membered that this very question was once under public dis- 
cussion at Linyanti, and, as usual, a bet was laid that no one 
could tell. After a number of days had elapsed, an old man 
claimed the prize, asserting that the tsetse laid its eggs, which 
were of a red color, on the leaves of the mopane-tree. These 
were probably only the eggs of an insect described in the 
" Missionary Travels" as depositing over its eggs a sweet gum, 
which is collected and eaten. Some denied that he had seen 
them; others affirmed that the red eggs were laid on the 
twigs of trees, and not on the leaves ; and others insisted that 
the eggs were placed in the droppings of buffaloes, and these 
last were probably in the right. The destruction of all game 
by the advance of civilization is the only chance of getting 
rid of the tsetse. 

We remember to have heard a furious discussion among 
the natives on the question whether the two toes of the os- 
trich represent the thumb and fore finger in man, or the little 
and ring fingers. On these occasions it is amusing to observe 
the freedom and earnestness with which men of the lowest 
grade assault the opinions of their betters. It is not often that 



448 BIRDS AND THEIR SPORTS. Chap. XXL 

they can bring themselves into importance, and they make 
the most of an opportunity. " We are little infants ; we are 
still clinging to the bosoms of our mothers ; we can not walk 
alone ; we know nothing at all ; but on this little subject we 
know that the elder gentlemen talk like all those who speak 
about that of which they know nothing. We never heard 
such nonsense," and so forth ; or two men of the same age 
may be the disputants. He who is most glib of tongue cov- 
ers his opponent with confusion ; that, however, does not end 
the argument. Why should it ? The sensation of choking 
in his throat, the pressure of blood on his heart, make the 
vanquished, when unable to argue still, gasp out, "Can you 
outrun me, then?" and off they start, run a mile, bring a 
branch of a tree at the end of the usual race-course, and, the 
mental and bodily excitement by this means equalized, they 
settle down in peace. If our editors, after allowing the paper 
war to rage till both the " esteemed correspondents" are ready 
to go into fits from the blood being lashed into fury round the 
heart and brain, instead of the usual atrocious way (!) of pro- 
posing the next letters to be paid for as advertisements, would 
only advise that they should " run a race," far fewer cases of 
heart disease and apoplexy would be traceable to the " sanc- 
tum" door. 

Birds are numerous on the Shupanga estate. Some kinds 
remain all the year round, while many others are there only 
for a few months. Flocks of green pigeons come in April to 
feed on the young fruit of the wild fig-trees, which is also eat- 
en by a large species of bat in the evenings. The pretty lit- 
tle black weaver, with yellow shoulders, appears to enjoy life 
intensely after assuming his wooing dress. A hearty break- 
fast is eaten in the morning, and then come the hours for 
making merry. A select party of three or four perch on the 



Chap. XXL AN OLD QUARTER-MASTER. 449 

bushes which skirt a small grassy plain, and cheer them- 
selves with the music of their own quiet and self-complacent 
song. A playful performance on the wing succeeds. Ex- 
panding his soft, velvet-like plumage, one glides with quiver- 
ing pinions to the centre of the open space, singing as he 
flies, then turns with a rapid whirring sound from his wings 
— somewhat like a child's rattle — and returns to his place 
again. One by one the others perform the same feat, and 
continue the sport for hours, striving which can produce the 
loudest brattle while turning. These games are only played 
during the season of courting and of the gay feathers ; the 
merriment seems never to be thought of while the bird wears 
his winter suit of sober brown. 

We received two mules from the Cape to aid us in trans- 
porting the pieces of the Lady ISTyassa past the cataracts and 
landed them at Shupanga, but they soon perished. A Port- 
uguese gentleman kindly informed us, after both the mules 
were dead, that he knew they would die ; for the land there 
had been often tried, and nothing would live on it — not even 
a pig. He said he had not told us so before, because he did 
not like to appear officious ! 

We obtained from the Gorgon an assistant in the shape of 
an old quarter-master; an excellent sailor, and exceedingly 
useful man when sober, but uncommonly apt to get drunk 
when he had the chance. He would have done well had we 
been able, as we intended, to proceed up the river at once, for 
then he must soon have been a total abstainer; but so long 
as we were near the Portuguese he was useless, and the pow- 
er which impelled him must have been terribly strong. He 
knew not a word of the language, and the natives were equal- 
ly ignorant of English; yet he succeeded in getting a native 
to go seven miles for some gin, and smuggle it, mixed with 

Ff 



450 SAIL FOR JOHANNA. Chap. XXI. 

native beer, into the ship. When sober, he was quiet, respect- 
ful, obliging, quick to see what should be done, constantly at 
work, and taking particularly good care of every thing. We 
felt sorry for the poor fellow, but, as we could not get up the 
river, we had to put him on board the first man-of-war we 
were able. Those who have never acquired the intense crav- 
ing for stimulants that these men feel, can scarcely realize 
the force of the temptation they have to resist. In the words 
of the Scotch toper, " We know about the drinking, but noth- 
ing of the drouth." 

By the time every thing had been placed on board the Lady 
Nyassa, the waters of the Zambesi and the Shire had fallen 
so low that it was useless to attempt taking her up to the cat- 
aracts before the rains in December. Draught oxen and pro- 
visions also were required, and could not be obtained nearer 
than the island of Johanna. The Portuguese, without refus- 
ing positively to let trade enter the Zambesi, threw impedi- 
ments in the way ; they only wanted a small duty ! They 
were about to establish a river police, and rearrange the 
crown lands, which have long since become Zulu lands ; 
meanwhile they were making the Zambesi, by slaving, of no 
value to any one. 

The Eovuma, which was reported to come from Lake Ny- 
assa, being out of their claims and a free river, we determined 
to explore it in our boats immediately on our return from 
Johanna, for which place, after some delay at the Kongone 
in repairing engines, paddle-wheel, and rudder, we J sailed on 
the 6th of August. A store of naval provisions had been 
formed on a hulk in Pomone Bay of that island for the sup- 
ply of the cruisers, and was in charge of Mr. Sunley, the con- 
sul, from whom we always received the kindest attentions 
and assistance. He now obliged us by parting with six oxen, 



Chap. XXI. EXPLORE THE ROVUMA. 451 

trained for his own use in sugar - making. Though sadly 
hampered in his undertaking by being obliged to employ 
slave labor, he has by indomitable energy overcome obstacles 
under which most persons would have sunk. He has done 
all that, under the circumstances, could be done to infuse a 
desire for freedom, by paying regular wages ; and has estab- 
lished a large factory, and brought 300 acres of rich soil un- 
der cultivation with sugar-cane. We trust he will realize the 
fortune which he so well deserves to earn. Had Mr. Sunley 
performed the same experiment on the main land, where peo- 
ple would have flocked to him for the wages he now gives, 
he would certainly have inaugurated a new era on the East 
Coast of Africa. On a small island where the slaveholders 
have complete power over the slaves, and where there is no 
free soil such as is every where met with in Africa, the ex- 
periment ought not to be repeated. Were Mr. Sunley com- 
mencing again, it should neither be in Zanzibar nor Johanna, 
but on African soil, where, if even a slave is ill treated, he can 
easily, by flight, become free. On an island under native 
rule, a joint manufacture by Arabs and Englishmen might 
only mean that the latter were to escape the odium of flog- 
ging the slaves. 

On leaving Johanna and our oxen for a time, H. M. S. 
Orestes towed us thence to the mouth of the Eovuma at the 
beginning of September. Captain Gardner her commander, 
and several of his officers, accompanied us up the river for 
two days in the gig and cutter. The water was unusually 
low, and it was rather dull work for a few hours in the morn- 
ing ; but the scene became livelier and more animated when 
the breeze began to blow. Our four boats then swept on un- 
der full sail, the men on the look-out in the gig and cutter 
calling "Port, sir!" " Starboard, sir !" "As you go, sir!" while 



452 THE LAKELET CHIDIA. Chap. XXL 

the black men in the bows of the others shouted the practical 
equivalents, " Pagombe ! Pagombe I" " Enda quete !" " Be- 
rane ! Berane I" Presently the leading boat touches on a 
sand-bank; down comes the fluttering sail; the men jump 
out to shove her off, and the other boats, shunning the ob- 
struction, shoot on ahead, to be brought up each in its turn 
by mistaking a sand-bank for the channel, which had often 
but a very little depth of water. 

A drowsy herd of hippopotami were suddenly startled by a 
score of rifle-shots, and stared in amazement at the strange 
objects which had invaded their peaceful domains, until a few 
more bullets compelled them to seek refuge at the bottom of 
the deep pool, near which they had been quietly reposing. 
On our return, one of the herd retaliated. He followed the 
boat, came up under it, and twice tried to tear the bottom out 
of it ; but, fortunately, it was too flat for his jaws to get a 
good gripe, so he merely damaged one of the planks with his 
tusks, though he lifted the boat right up, with ten men and a 
ton of ebony in it. 

We slept, one of the two nights Captain Gardner was with 
us, opposite the Lakelet Chidia, which is connected with the 
river in flood time, and is nearly surrounded by hills some 500 
or 600 feet high, dotted over with trees. A few small groups 
of huts stood on the hill-sides, with gardens off which the 
usual native produce had been reaped. The people did not 
seem much alarmed by the presence of the large party which 
had drawn up on the sand-banks below their dwellings. 
There is abundance of large ebony in the neighborhood. The 
pretty little antelope (Cephalophus cceruleus), about the size of 
a hare, seemed to abound, as many of their skins were offered 
for sale. Neat figured date-leaf mats of various colors are 
woven here, the different dyes being obtained from the barks 



Chap. XXI. VALLEY OF THE ROVUMA. 453 

of trees. Cattle could not live on the banks of the Eovuma 
on account of the tsetse, which are found from near the mouth 
up as far as we could take the boats. The navigation did not 
improve as we ascended ; snags, brought down by the floods, 
were common, and left in the channel on the sudden sub- 
sidence of the water. In many places, where the river di- 
vided into two or three channels, there was not water enough 
in any of them for a boat drawing three feet, so we had to 
drag ours over the shoals ; but we saw the river at its very 
lowest, and it may be years before it is so dried up again. 

The valley of the Eovuma, bounded on each side by a range 
of highlands, is from two to four miles in width, and comes 
in a pretty straight course from the "W.S.'W. ; but the chan- 
nel of the river is winding, and now, at its lowest, zigzagged 
so perversely that frequently the boats had to pass over three 
miles to make one in a straight line. With a full stream it 
must, of course, be much easier work. Few natives were seen 
during the first week. Their villages are concealed in the 
thick jungle on the hill-sides, for protection from marauding 
slave-parties. Not much of interest was observed on this 
part of the silent and shallow river. Though feeling con- 
vinced that it was unfit for navigation except for eight months 
of the year, we pushed on, resolved to see if, farther inland, 
the accounts we had received from different naval officers of 
its great capabilities would prove correct ; or if, by communi- 
cation with Lake Nyassa, even the upper part could be turn- 
ed to account. Our exploration showed us that the greatest 
precaution is required in those who visit new countries. 

The reports we received from gentlemen who had entered 
the river, and were well qualified to judge, were, that the Eo- 
vuma was infinitely superior to the Zambesi in the absence 
of any bar at its mouth, in its greater volume of water, and 



454 DIFFEEENCE OF LANGUAGE. Chap. XXI. 

in the beauty of the adjacent lands. We probably came at 
a different season from that in which they visited it, and our 
account ought to be taken with theirs to arrive at the truth. 
It might be available as a highway for commerce during 
three quarters of each year ; but casual visitors, like ourselves 
and others, are ill able to decide. The absence of bird or an- 
imal life was remarkable. Occasionally we saw pairs of the 
stately jabir us, or adjutant-looking marabouts, wading among 
the shoals, and spurwinged geese, and other water-fowl, but 
there was scarcely a crocodile or a hippopotamus to be seen. 
At the end of the first week, an old man called at our 
camp and said he would send a present from his village, which 
was up among the hills. He appeared next morning with a 
number of his people, bringing meal, cassava root, and yams. 
The language differs considerably from that on the Zambesi, 
but it is of the same family. The people are Makonde, and 
are on friendly terms with the Mabiha and the Makoa, who 
live south of the Eovuma. When taking a walk up the 
slopes of the north bank, we found a great variety of trees we 
had seen nowhere else. Those usually met with far inland 
seem here to approach the coast. African ebony, generally 
named mpingu, is abundant within eight miles of the sea : it 
attains a larger size, and has more of the interior black wood 
than usual. A good timber-tree called mosoho is also found ; 
and we saw half-caste Arabs near the coast cutting up a large 
log of it into planks. Before reaching the top of the rise we 
were in a forest of bamboos. On the plateau above, large 
patches were cleared and cultivated. A man invited us to 
take a cup of beer ; on our complying with his request, the 
fear previously shown by the by-standers vanished. Our 
Mazaro men could hardly understand what they said. Some 
of them waded in the river, and caught a curious fish in holes 



Chap. XXI. MOON-BLINDNESS. 455 

in the clay bank. Its ventral fin is peculiar, being unusually 
large, and of a circular shape, like boys' playthings called 
" suckers." We were told that this fish is found also in the 
Zambesi, and is called Chirire. Though all its fins are large, 
it is asserted that it rarely ventures out into the stream, but 
remains near its hole, where it is readily caught by the hand. 

The Zambesi men thoroughly understood the characteristic 
marks of deep or shallow water, and showed great skill in 
finding out the proper channel. The Molimo is the steers- 
man at the heim, the Mokadamo is the head canoe-man, and 
he stands erect on the bows with a long pole in his hands, and 
directs the steersman where to go, aiding the rudder, if neces- 
sary, with his pole. The others preferred to stand and punt 
our boat, rather than row with our long oars, being able to 
shove her ahead faster than they could pull her. They are 
accustomed to short paddles. Our Mokadamo was affected 
with moon-blindness, and could not see at all at night. His 
comrades then led him about, and handed him his food. 
They thought that it was only because his eyes rested all 
night that he could see the channel so well by day. At diffi- 
cult places the Mokadamo sometimes, however, made mis- 
takes, and ran us aground ; and the others, evidently imbued 
with the spirit of resistance to constituted authority, and led 
by Joao, an aspirant for the office, jeered him for his stupidit}*. 
" Was he asleep ? Why did he allow the boat to come there ? 
Could he not see the channel was somewhere else?" At last 
the Mokadamo threw down the pole in disgust, and told Joao 
he might be a Mokadamo himself. The office was accepted 
with alacrity ; but in a few minutes he too ran us into a worse 
difficulty than his predecessor ever did, and was at once dis- 
rated, amid the derision of his comrades. 

In traveling it is best to enjoy the little simple incidents 



456 ENGLISHMEN IN AFRICA. Chap. XXI. 

of this kind, which, at most, exemplify the tendencies woven 
into the being of the whole human family. It is a pity to 
hear that some of our countrymen rudely interfere in what 
really does no harm. Blows even have been inflicted under 
the silly assumption that the negro is this, that, and the other 
thing, and not, like other men, a curious mixture of good and 
evil, wisdom and folly, cleverness and stupidity. An English- 
man possessed of a gun, which had the ugly trick of going off 
of itself, came up the Zambesi in a canoe manned by natives. 
He scarcely knew another word of the language than the 
verb " to kill." The gun, as was its wont, accidentally went 
off close to the head of one of the party, who, before going to 
sleep, expressed his fears to his comrades that this unlucky 
gun might " kill" some of them. Our hero caught the word, 
and spent the whole night revolver in hand, ready to punish 
the treachery which existed only in his own excited brain. 
This adventure he afterward published in a newspaper as a 
terrible situation, a hairbreadth escape from blood-thirsty sav- 
ages. Another British Lion, having to travel some two hund- 
red miles in a canoe, and being unable to speak a word of the 
language, thought it clever to fire off all the barrels of his re- 
volver every time his canoe-men proposed to land during the 
livelong day. The torrid sun right overhead was at its hot- 
test. The poor fellows made signs they wished to purchase 
some beer. Off went the revolver ; " No, no, no, paddle you 
must." This madness, as described to us by himself, was evi- 
dently thought clever. Another, whose estimate of himself 
and that formed of him by a tribe he visited did not at all co- 
incide, after complaining at a public meeting of the untruth- 
fulness of a previous traveler to whom that same tribe had 
shown distinguished kindness and respect, stated, as we learn 
on the authority of a clergyman who was present, that he had 



Chap. XXL ISLAND OF KICHOKOMANE. 457 

tied up one of his people before reaching the tribe referred to, 
" and given him a sound thrashing." Let us fancy the effect 
on an English village if a black man came to it, and a white 
servant complained that he had been maltreated by him on 
the way. We have felt heartily ashamed sometimes on dis- 
covering how causelessly we have been angry. No doubt 
the natives are at times as perversely stupid as servants at 
home can be when they like, but our conduct must often ap- 
pear to the native mind as a mixture of silliness and insanity. 

On the 16th of September we arrived at the inhabited isl- 
and of Kichokomane. The usual way of approaching an un- 
known people is to call out in a cheerful tone "Malonda!" 
Things for sale, or do you want to sell any thing ? If we can 
obtain a man from the last village, he is employed, though 
only useful in explaining to the next that we come in a friend- 
ly way. The people here were shy of us at first, and could 
not be induced to sell any food, until a woman, more adven- 
turous than the rest, sold us a fowl. This opened the mar- 
ket, and crowds came with fowls and meal, far beyond our 
wants. The women are as ugly as those on Lake Nyassa, for 
who can be handsome wearing the pelele or upper-lip ring of 
large dimensions? We were once surprised to see young 
men wearing the pelele, and were told that in the tribe of the 
Mabiha, on the south bank, men as well as women wore them. 

Along the left bank, above Kichokomane, is an exceeding- 
ly fertile plain, nearly two miles broad, and studded with a 
number of deserted villages. The inhabitants were living in 
temporary huts on low, naked sand-banks ; and we found this 
to be the case as far as we went. They leave most of their 
property and food behind, because they are not afraid of these 
being stolen, but only fear being stolen themselves. The 
great slave-route from Nyassa to Kilwa passes to ISLE, from 



458 UNPROVOKED HOSTILITY. Chap. XXL 

S.W. just beyond them, and it is dangerous to remain in their 
villages at this time of year, when the kidnappers are abroad. 
In one of the temporary villages, we saw, in passing, two hu- 
man heads lying on the ground. We slept a couple of miles 
above this village. 

Before sunrise next morning, a large party, armed with 
bows and arrows and muskets, came to the camp, two or 
three of them having a fowl each, which we refused to pur- 
chase, having bought enough the day before. They followed 
us all the morning, and after breakfast those on the left bank 
swam across and joined the main party on the other side. It 
was evidently their intention to attack us at a chosen spot, 
where we had to pass close to a high bank, but their plan 
was frustrated by a stiff breeze sweeping the boats past be- 
fore the majority could get to the place. They disappeared 
then, but came out again ahead of us on a high wooded bank, 
walking rapidly to the bend, near which we were obliged to 
sail. An arrow was shot at the foremost boat ; and seeing 
the force at the bend, we pushed out from the side, as far as 
the shoal water would permit, and tried to bring them to a 
parley, by declaring that we had not come to fight, but to 
see the river. " Why did you fire a gun a little while ago?" 
they asked. " We shot a large puff-adder, to prevent it from 
killing men ; you may see it lying dead on the beach." With 
great courage, our Mokadamo waded to within thirty yards 
of the bank, and spoke with much earnestness, assuring them 
that we were a peaceable party, and had not come for war, 
but to see the river. We were friends, and our countrymen 
bought cotton and ivory, and wished to come and trade with 
them. All we wanted was to go up quietly to look at the 
river, and then return to the sea again. While he was talk- 
ing with those on the shore, the old rogue, who appeared to 



Chap. XXL DEMAND OF TOLL. 459 

be the ringleader, stole up the bank, and, with a dozen oth- 
ers, waded across to the island, near which the boats lay, and 
came down behind us. Wild with excitement, thej rushed 
into the water, and danced in our rear, with drawn bows, tak- 
ing aim, and making various savage gesticulations. Their 
leader urged them to get behind some snags, and then shoot 
at us. The party on the bank in front had many muskets, 
and those of them who had bows held them with arrows 
ready set in the bowstrings. They had a mass of thick bush 
and trees behind them, into which they could in a moment 
dart after discharging their muskets and arrows, and be com- 
pletely hidden from our sight, a circumstance that always 
gives people who use bows and arrows the greatest confi- 
dence. Notwithstanding these demonstrations, we were ex- 
ceedingly loath to come to blows. We spent a full half hour 
exposed at any moment to be struck by a bullet or poisoned 
arrow. We explained that we were better armed than they 
were, and had plenty of ammunition, the suspected want of 
which often inspires them with courage, but that we did not 
wish to shed the blood of the children of the same Great Fa- 
ther with ourselves ; that if we must fight, the guilt would be 
all theirs. 

This being a common mode of expostulation among them- 
selves, we so far succeeded that, with great persuasion, the 
leader and others laid down their arms, and waded over from 
the bank to the boats to talk the matter over. " This was 
their river; they did not allow white men to use it. We 
must pay toll for leave to pass." It was somewhat humili- 
ating to do so, but it was pay or fight ; and, rather than fight, 
we submitted to the humiliation of paying for their friend- 
ship, and gave them thirty yards of cloth. They pledged 
themselves to be our friends ever afterward, and said they 



460 BLOOD-THIRSTY SLAVERS. Chap. XXL 

would have food cooked for us on our return. We then 
hoisted sail and proceeded, glad that the affair had been am- 
icably settled. Those on shore walked up to the bend above 
to look at the boat, as we supposed ; but, the moment she 
was abreast of them, they gave us a volley of musket balls 
and poisoned arrows, without a word of warning. Fortunate- 
ly, we were so near that all the arrows passed clear over us, 
but four musket balls went through the sail just above our 
heads. All our assailants bolted into the bushes and long 
grass the instant after firing, save two, one of whom was about 
to discharge a musket and the other an arrow when arrested 
by the fire of the second boat. Not one of them showed their 
faces again till we were a thousand yards away. A few shots 
were then fired over their heads, to give them an idea of the 
range of our rifles, and they all fled into the woods. Those 
on the sand-bank rushed off too, with the utmost speed ; but, 
as they had not shot at us, we did not molest them, and they 
went off safely with their cloth. They probably expected to 
kill one of our number, and in the confusion rob the boats. 
It is only where the people are slavers that the natives of this 
part of Africa are blood-thirsty. 

These people have a bad name in the country in front, 
even among their own tribe. A slave-trading Arab we met 
above, thinking we were then on our way down the river, 
advised us not to land at the villages, but to stay in the boats, 
as the inhabitants were treacherous, and attacked at once, 
without any warning or provocation. Our experience of 
their conduct fully confirmed the truth of what he said. 
There was no trade on the river where they lived, but beyond 
that part there was a brisk canoe-trade in rice and salt ; those 
farther in the interior cultivating rice, and sending it down 
the river to be exchanged for salt, which is extracted from 



Chap. XXL COUNTRY OF CHOXGA MICHI. 461 

the earth in certain places on the banks. Our assailants hard- 
ly anticipated resistance, and told a neighboring chief that if 
they had known who we were, they would not have attacked 
English, who can " bite hard." They offered no molestations 
on our way down, though we were an hour in passing their 
village. Our canoe-men plucked up courage on finding that 
we had come off unhurt. One of them, named Chiku, ac- 
knowledging that he had been terribly frightened, said, " His 
fear was not the kind which makes a man jump overboard 
and run away, but that which brings the heart up to the 
mouth, and renders the man powerless, and no more able to 
fight than a woman." 

In the country of Chonga Michi, about 80 or 90 miles up 
the river, we found decent people, though of the same tribe, 
who treated strangers with civility. A body of Makoa had 
come from their own country in the south and settled here. 
The Makoa are known by a cicatrice in the forehead shaped 
like the new moon with the horns turned downward. The 
tribe possesses all the country west of Mozambique, and they 
will not allow any of the Portuguese to pass into their coun- 
try more than two hours' distance from the fort. A hill some 
ten or twelve miles distant, called Pau, has been visited dur- 
ing the present generation only by one Portuguese and one 
English officer, and this visit was accomplished only by the 
influence of the private friendship of a chief for this Portu- 
guese gentleman. Our allies have occupied the Fort of Mo- 
zambique for three hundred years, but in this, as in all other 
cases, have no power farther than they can see from a gun- 
carriage. 

The Makoa chief, Matingula, was hospitable and communi- 
cative, telling us all he knew of the river and country be- 
yond. He had been once to Iboe, and once at Mozambique 



462 HIVES AND HONEY. Chap. XXI. 

with slaves. Our men understood his language easily. ,A 
useless musket he had bought at one of the above places was 
offered us for a little cloth. Having received a present of 
food from him, a railway rug was handed to him : he looked 
at it— had never seen cloth like that before—did not approve 
of it, and would rather have cotton cloth. " But this will 
keep you warm at night." " Oh I do not wish to be kept 
warm at night." We gave him a bit of cotton cloth, not one 
third the value of the rug, but it was more highly prized. 
His people refused to sell their fowls for our splendid prints 
and drab cloths. They had probably been taken in with 
gaudy-patterned sham prints before. They preferred a very 
cheap, plain blue stuff of which they had experience. A great 
quantity of excellent honey is collected all along the river by 
bark hives being placed for the bees on the high trees on 
both banks. Large pots of it, very good and clear, were of- 
fered in exchange for a very little cloth. No wax was 
brought for sale ; there being no market for this commodity, 
it is probably thrown away as useless. 

At Michi we lose the table-land which, up to this point, 
bounds the view on both sides of the river, as it were, with 
ranges of flat-topped hills, 600 or 800 feet high ; and to this 
plateau a level fertile plain succeeds, on which stand detach- 
ed granite hills. That portion of the table-land on the right 
bank seems to bend away to the south, still preserving the 
appearance of a hill range. The height opposite extends a 
few miles farther west, and then branches off in a northerly 
direction. A few small pieces of coal were picked up on the 
sand-banks, showing that this useful mineral exists on the 
Eovuma, or on some of its tributaries : the natives know that 
it will burn, At the Lakelet Chidia we noticed the same 
sandstone rock, with fossil wood on it, which we have on the 



Chap. XXI. A SMART YOUNG WATERWOMAN. 465 

Zambesi, and knew to be a sure evidence of coal beneath. 
We mentioned this at the time to Captain Gardner, and our 
finding coal now seemed a verification of what we then said ; 
the coal-field probably extends from the Zambesi to the Ro- 
vuma, if not beyond it. Some of the rocks lower down have 
the permanent water-line three feet above the present height 
of the water. 

A few miles west of the Makoa of Matingula we came 
again among the Makonde, but now of good repute. War 
and slavery have driven them to seek refuge on the sand- 
banks. A venerable-looking old man hailed us as we passed, 
and asked us if we were going by without speaking. We 
landed, and he laid down his gun and came to us; he was 
accompanied by his brother, who shook hands with every one 
in the boat, as he had seen people do at Kilwa. " Then you 
have seen white men before?" we said. "Yes," replied the 
polite African, " but never people of your quality." These 
men were very black, and wore but little clothing. A young 
woman, dressed in the highest style of Makonde fashion, 
punting as dexterously as a man could, brought a canoe full 
of girls to see us. She wore an ornamental head-dress of red 
beads tied to her hair on one side of her head, a necklace of 
fine beads of various colors, two bright figured brass brace- 
lets on her left arm, and scarcely a farthing's worth of cloth, 
though it was at its cheapest. 

As we pushed on westward we found that the river makes 
a little southing, and some reaches were deeper than any near 
the sea ; but when we had ascended about 140 miles by the 
river's course from the sea, soft tufa rocks began to appear ; 
ten miles beyond, the river became more narrow and rocky ; 
and when, according to our measurement, we had ascended 
156 miles, our farther progress was arrested. We were rath- 

Gg 



4:66 STOPPED BY EOCKY NARROWS. Chap. XXI. 

er less than two degrees in a straight line from the Coast. 
The incidents worth noticing were but few : seven canoes 
with loads of salt and rice kept company with us for some 
days, and the farther we went inland, the more civil the peo- 
ple became. 

When we came to a stand, just below the island of Nyama- 
tolo, Long. 38° 36' E., and Lat.ll 53', the river was narrow 
and full of rocks. Near the island there is a rocky rapid 
with narrow passages fit only for native canoes ; the fall is 
small and the banks quite low, but these rocks were an effect- 
ual barrier to all farther progress in boats. Previous reports 
represented the navigable part of this river as extending to 
the distance of a month's sail from its mouth ; we found that, 
at the ordinary heights of the water, a boat might reach the 
obstructions which seem peculiar to all African rivers in six 
or eight days. The Eovuma is remarkable for the high lands 
that flank it for some eighty miles from the ocean. The cat- 
aracts of other rivers occur in mountains ; those of the Eovu- 
ma are found in a level part, with hills only in the distance. 
Far away in the west and north we could see high blue 
heights, probably of igneous origin from their forms, rising 
ont of a plain. 

,The distance from ISTgomano, a spot thirty miles farther 
up, to the Arab crossing -places of Lake ISTyassa Tsenga or 
Kotakota was said to be twelve days. The way we had dis- 
covered to Lake ISTyassa by Murchison's Cataracts had so 
much less land carriage that we considered it best to take our 
steamer thither by the route in which we were well known, 
instead of working where we were strangers, and accordingly 
we made np our minds to return. 

The natives reported a worse place above our turning-point, 
the passage being still narrower than this. An Arab, they 



Chap. XXL SOURCES OF THE KOVUMA. 467 

said, once built a boat above the rapids, and sent it down full 
of slaves, but it was broken to pieces in these upper narrows. 
Many still maintained that the Kovuina came from Nyassa, 
and that it is very narrow as it issues out of the lake. One 
man declared that he had seen it with his own eyes as it left 
the lake, and seemed displeased at being cross-questioned, as 
if we doubted his veracity. 

More satisfactory information, as it appeared to us, was ob- 
tained from others. Two days, or thirty miles beyond where 
we turned back, the Eovuma is joined by the Liende, which, 
coming from the southwest, rises in the mountains on .the east 
side of Nyassa. The great slave route to Kilwa runs up the 
banks of this river, which is only ankle-deep at the dry sea- 
son of the year. The Eovuma itself comes from the W.N.W., 
and after the traveler passes the confluence of the Liende at 
Ngomano or " meeting -place," the chief of which part is 
named Ndonde, he finds the river narrow, and the people 
Ajawa. 

The ISTyamatolo people have a great abundance of food, 
and they cultivate the land extensively. The island is sim- 
ply their summer residence, their permanent villages being 
in the woods. "While hunting, we entered some of these vil- 
lages, and saw that large quantities of grain were left in them, 
and in some parts of the forest away from the villages we 
found many pots of oil -yielding seeds (sesamum), besides 
grain. The sesamum was offered to us both for sale and as a 
present, under the name mafuta, or fat ; and small quantities 
of gum copal were also brought to us, which led us to think 
that these articles may have been collected by the Arabs. 
Tobacco, formed into lumps, was abundant and cheap. Cot- 
ton-bushes were seen, but no one was observed spinning or 
weaving cotton for any thing but fishing-nets. The article of 



468 CROCODILES— THEIR EGGS. Chap. XXI. 

most value was a climbing dye-wood, which attains the thick- 
ness of a man's leg, and which Dr. Kirk has found experi- 
mentally to be of considerable value as a fast yellow color. 
Baobab-trees on the Eovuma, though not nearly so gigantic 
in size as those on the Zambesi, bear fruit more than twice 
as large. The great white blossoms were just out, and much 
of last year's fruit was still hanging on the branches. 

Crocodiles in the Eovuma have a sorry time of it. Never 
before were reptiles so persecuted and snubbed. They are 
hunted with spears, and spring-traps are set for them. If one 
of them, enters an inviting pool after fish, he soon finds a fence 
thrown round it, and a spring-trap set in the only path out 
of the inclosure. Their flesh is eaten, and relished. The 
banks, on which the female lays her eggs by night, are care- 
fully searched by day, and all the eggs dug out and devoured. 
The fish-hawk makes havoc among the~few young ones that 
escape their other enemies. Our men were constantly on the 
look-out for crocodiles' nests. One was found containing 
thirty -five newly-laid eggs, and they declared that the croco- 
dile would lay as many more the second night in another 
place. The eggs were a foot deep in the sand on the top of 
a bank ten feet high. The animal digs a hole with its foot, 
covers the eggs, and leaves them till the river rises over the 
nest in about three months afterward, when she comes back, 
and assists the young ones out. We once saw opposite Tette 
young crocodiles in December, swimming beside an island in 
company with an old one. The yolk of the egg is nearly as 
white as the real white. In taste they resemble hen's eggs, 
with perhaps a smack of custard, and would be as highly 
relished by whites as by blacks, were it not for their unsavory 
origin in men-eaters. 

Hunting the Senze (Aulacodus Swindernianus), an animal 



Chap. XXI. KETURN TO THE PIONEER. 4(59 

the size of a large cat, but in shape more like a pig, was the 
chief business of men and boys as we passed the reedy banks 
and low islands. They set fire to a mass of reeds, and, armed 
with sticks, spears, bows and arrows, stand in groups guard- 
ing the outlets through which the scared Senze may run from 
the approaching flames. Dark dense volumes of impenetra- 
ble smoke now roll over on the lee side of the islet and 
shroud the hunters. At times, vast sheets of lurid flames 
bursting forth, roaring, crackling, and exploding, leap wildly 
far above the tall reeds. Out rush the terrified animals, and 
amid the smoke are seen the excited hunters dancing about 
with frantic gesticulations, and hurling stick, spear, and arrow 
at their burned-out victims. Kites hover over the smoke, 
ready to pounce on the mantis and locusts as they spring from 
the fire. Small crows and hundreds of swallows are on eager 
wing, darting into the smoke and out again, seizing fugitive 
flies. Scores of insects, in their haste to escape from the fire, 
jump into the river, and the active fish enjoy a rare feast. 

We returned to the Pioneer on the 9th of October, having 
been away one month. The ship's company had used distilled 
water, a condenser having been sent out from England ; and 
there had not been a single case of sickness on board since 
we left, though there were so many cases of fever the few 
days she lay in the same spot last year. Our boat party 
drank the water of the river, and the three white sailors, who 
had never been in an African river before, had some slight 
attacks of fever. 



470 QUILLIMANE. Chap. XXII. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

Quillimane. — Colonel Nunez. — Government opposed to Agriculture.— Passport 
System. — The Quillimane "Do-nothings." — Return to the Zambesi. — Shu- 
panga, December 19th, 1862. — Our Mazaro Men and their Relations. — Fam- 
ine at Tette. — Dispersion of Slaves. — "The Portuguese don't Farm" nor 
Hunt. — January 10th, the Lady Nyassa in tow. — Mariano's Atrocities. — 
The Bishop's Grave.— Smell and Hearing in Animals.— Angling for Croco- 
dile.— Frightful Sight.— Crocodile versus Makololo.— Penetration of Air 
throughout the Systems of Birds.— Return of Mr. Thornton.— Kilimanjaro. 
— Mr. Thornton's generous Kindness to the Mission. — Journey to Tette too 
much for him. — His Death and Grave. — Wide-spread Desolation. — Slave- 
trade and Famine. — Marsh Culture. — Lethargy of the remnant of the Peo- 
ple. — Skeletons. — Abolition of the Slave-trade a sine qua non. — Influence of 
the English Steamer on Lake Nyassa. — Road-making. — Green Freshness 
of Hills. — No Provisions to be bought. — No Labor. — Poor Food and de- 
pressed Spirits the forerunners of Disease. — Dr. Kirk and C. Livingstone or- 
dered home. — Dr. Livingstone 111. — Dr. Kirk remains to attend him. — 19th 
of May, Dr. Kirk and C. Livingstone leave. — Remonstrance to the Lisbon 
Government. — Empty Results. — Conduct of Portuguese Statesmen toward 
Africa. — Dr. Livingstone and Mr. Rae start to look after our old Boat. — 
Employments of those left behind. — Woman wounded by an Arrow. — Te- 
nacity of Life. — Dr. Meller. 

We put to sea on the 18th of October, and, again touching 
at Johanna, obtained a crew of Johanna men and some oxen, 
and sailed for the Zambesi; but our fuel failing before we 
reached it, and the wind being contrary, we ran into Quilli- 
mane for wood. 

Quillimane must have been built solely for the sake of 
carrying on the slave-trade, for no man in his senses would 
ever have dreamed of placing a village on such a low, muddy, 
fever-haunted, and musquito-swarming site, had it not been 
for the facilities it afforded for slaving. The bar may at 
springs and floods be easily crossed by sailing vessels, but, 
being far from the land, it is always dangerous for boats. 



Chap. XXII. 



COLONEL NUNEZ. 



471 



Slaves, under the name of " free emigrants," have gone by 
thousands from Quillimane, during the last six years, to the 
ports a little to the south, particularly to Massangano. Some 
excellent brick-houses still stand in the place, and the owners 




View of Quillimane and of the Honeer. 

are generous and hospitable: among them our good friend, 
Colonel Nunez. His disinterested kindness to us and to all 
our countrymen can never be forgotten. He is a noble ex- 
ample of what energy and uprightness may accomplish even 
here. He came out as a cabin-boy, and, without a single 
friend to help him, he has persevered in an honorable course 
until he is the richest man on the East Coast. "When Dr. 
Livingstone came down the Zambesi in 1856, Colonel Nunez 
was the chief of the only four honorable, trustworthy men in 
the country. But while he has risen, a whole herd has sunk, 
making loud lamentations, through puffs of cigar-smoke, over 
negro laziness ; they might add, their own. 



472 RETURN TO THE ZAMBESI. Chap. XXII. 

All agricultural enterprise is virtually discouraged by the 
Quillimane government. A man must purchase a permit 
from the governor when he wishes to visit his country farm ; 
and this tax, in a country where labor is unpopular, causes 
the farms to be almost entirely left in the hands of a head 
slave, who makes returns to his master as interest or honesty 
prompts him. A passport must also be bought whenever a 
man wishes to go up the river to Mazaro, Senna, or Tette, or 
even to reside for a month at Quillimane. With a soil and 
a climate well suited for the growth of the cane, abundance 
of slave labor, and water communication to any market in the 
world, they have never made their own sugar. All they use 
is imported from Bombay. " The people of Quillimane have 
no enterprise," said a young European Portuguese ; " they do 
nothing, and are always wasting their time in suffering, or in ' 
recovering from fever." 

We entered the Zambesi about the end of November and 
found it unusually low, so we did not get up to Shupanga till 
the 19th of December. The friends of our Mazaro men, who 
had now become good sailors and very attentive servants, 
turned out and gave them a hearty welcome back from the 
perils of the sea : they had begun to fear that they would 
never return. We hired them at a sixteen -yard piece of cloth 
a month — aboul; ten shillings' worth, the Portuguese market- 
price of the cloth being then sevenpence halfpenny a yard — 
and paid them five pieces each for four and a half months' 
work. A merchant at the same time paid other Mazaro men 
three pieces for seven months, and they were with him in the 
interior. If the merchants do not prosper, it is not because 
labor is dear, but because it is scarce, and because they are so 
eager on every occasion to sell the workmen out of the coun- 
try. Our men had also received quantities of good clothes 



Chap. XXII. DROUGHT AND SCARCITY. 473 

from the sailors of the Pioneer and of the Orestes, and were 
now regarded by their neighbors and by themselves as men 
of importance. Never before had they possessed so much 
wealth : they believed that they might settle in life, being 
now of sufficient standing to warrant their entering the mar- 
ried state ; and a wife and a hut were among their first in- 
vestments. Sixteen yards were paid to the wife's parents, 
and a hut cost four yards. We should have liked to have 
kept them in the ship, for they were well-behaved, and had 
learned a great deal of the work required. Though they 
would not themselves go again, they engaged others for us, 
and brought twice as many as we could take of their broth- 
ers and cousins, who were eager to join the ship and go with 
us up the Shire, or any where else. They all agreed to take 
half-pay until they too had learned to work ; and we found 
no scarcity of labor, though all that could be exported is now 
out of the country. 

There had been a drought of unusual severity during the 
past season in the country between Lupata and Kebrabasa, 
and it had extended northeast to the Manganja Highlands. 
All the Tette slaves, except a very few household ones, had 
been driven away by hunger, and were now far off in the 
woods, and wherever wild fruit, or the prospect of obtaining 
any thing whatever to keep the breath of life in them, was 
to be found. Their masters were said never to expect to see 
them again. There have been two years of great hunger at 
Tette since we have been in the country, and a famine like 
the present prevailed in 1854, when thousands died of starva- 
tion. If men like the Cape farmers owned this country, their 
energy and enterprise would soon render the crops independ- 
ent of rain. There being plenty of slope or fall, the land coulcl 
be .easily irrigated from the Zambesi and its tributary streams. 



474 THE LADY NYASSA IN TOW. Chap. XXII. 

A Portuguese colony can never prosper : it is used as a pe- 
nal settlement, and every thing must be done military fash- 
ion. " What do I care for this country?" said the most en- 
terprising of the Tette merchants : " all I want is to make 
money as soon as possible, and then go to Bombay and en- 
joy it." All business at Tette was now suspended. Carriers 
could not be found to take the goods into the interior, and 
the merchants could barely obtain food for their own fami-. 
lies. At Mazaro more rain had fallen, and a tolerable crop 
followed. The people of Shupanga were collecting and dry- 
ing different wild fruits, nearly all of which are far from pal- 
atable to a European taste. The root of a small creeper called 
" bise" is dug up and eaten. In appearance it is not unlike 
the small white sweet potato, and has a little of the flavor 
of our potato. It would be very good if it were only a lit- 
tle larger. From another tuber, called "ulanga," very good 
starch can be made. A few miles from Shupanga there is an 
abundance of large game, but the people here, though fond 
enough of meat, are not a hunting race, and seldom kill any. 
The Shire having risen, we steamed off on the 10th of Jan- 
uary, 1863, with the Lady Nyassa in tow. It was not long 
before we came upon the ravages of the notorious Mariano. 
The survivors of a small hamlet, at the foot of Morambala, 
were in a state of starvation, having lost their food by one of 
his marauding parties. The women were in the fields col- 
lecting insects, roots, wild fruits, and whatever could be eat- 
en, in order to drag on their lives, if possible, till the next 
crop should be ripe. Two canoes passed us, that had been 
robbed by Mariano's band of every thing they had in them ; 
the owners were gathering palm-nuts for their subsistence. 
They wore palm-leaf aprons, as the robbers had stripped them 
of their clothing and ornaments. Dead bodies floated past us 



Chap. XXII. MARIANO'S ATROCITIES. 475 

daily, and in the mornings the paddles had to be cleared of 
corpses, caught by the floats during the night. For scores 
of miles the entire population of the valley was swept away 
by this scourge Mariano, who is again, as he was before, the 
great Portuguese slave-agent. It made the heart ache to see 
the wide - spread desolation : the river-banks, once so popu- 
lous, all silent ; the villages burned down, and an oppressive 
stillness reigning where formerly crowds of eager sellers ap- 
peared with the various products of their industry. Here 
and there might be seen on the bank a small, dreary, deserted 
shed, where had sat, day after day, a starving fisherman, un- 
til the rising waters drove the fish from their wonted haunts 
and left him to die. Tingane had been defeated ; his people 
had been killed, kidnapped, and forced to flee from their vil- 
lages. There were a few wretched survivors in a village 
above the Euo ; but the majority of the population was dead. 
The sight and smell of dead bodies was every where. Many 
skeletons lay beside the path, where in their weakness they 
had fallen and expired. Ghastly living forms of boys and 
girls, with dull dead eyes, were crouching beside some of the 
huts. A few more miserable days of their terrible hunger, 
and they would be with the dead. 

Oppressed with the shocking scenes around, we visited the 
bishop's grave ; and though it matters little where a good 
Christian's ashes rest, yet it was with sadness that we thought 
over the hopes which had clustered around him as he left the 
classic grounds of Cambridge, all now buried in this wild 
place. How it would have torn his kindly heart to witness 
the sights we now were forced to see ! 

In giving vent to the natural feelings of regret that a man 
so eminently endowed and learned as was Bishop Mackenzie 
should have been so soon cut off, some have expressed an 



476 BISHOP MACKENZIE. Chap. XXII. 

opinion that it was wrong to use an instrument so valuable 
merely to convert the heathen. If the attempt is to be made 
at all, it is " penny wise and pound foolish" to employ any 
but the very best men, and those who are specially educated 
for the work. An ordinary clergyman, however well suited 
for a parish, will not, without special training, make a mis- 
sionary ; and as to their comparative usefulness, it is like that 
of the man who builds a hospital, as compared with that of 
the surgeon who in after years only administers for a time 
the remedies which the founder had provided in perpetuity. 
Had the bishop succeeded in introducing Christianity, his 
converts might have been few, but they would have formed 
a continuous roll for all time to come. 

The Shire fell two feet before we reached the shallow cross- 
ing where we had formerly such difficulty, and we had now 
two ships to take up. A hippopotamus was shot two miles 
above a bank on which the ship lay a fortnight : it floated in 
three hours. As the boat was towing it down, the crocodiles 
were attracted by the dead beast, and several shots had to be 
fired to keep them off. The bullet had not entered the brain 
of the animal, but driven a splinter of bone into it. A little 
moisture, with some gas, issued from the wound, and this was 
all that could tell the crocodiles down the stream of a dead 
hippopotamus, and yet they came up from miles below. 
Their sense of smell must be as acute as their hearing"; both 
are quite extraordinary. Dozens fed on the meat we left. 
Our Krooman, Jumbo, used to assert that the crocodile never 
eats fresh meat, but always keeps it till it is* high and tender 
— and the stronger it smells, the better he likes it. There 
seems to be some truth in this. They can swallow but small 
pieces at a time, and find it difficult to tear fresh meat. In 
the act of swallowing, which is like that of a dog, the head is 



Chap. XXII. FRIGHTFUL SIGHT. 477 

raised out of the water. We tried to catch some, and one 
was soon hooked ; it required half a dozen hands to haul him 
up the river, and the shark-hook straightened, and he got 
away. A large iron .hook was next made, but, as the crea- 
tures could not swallow it, their jaws soon pressed it straight, 
and our crocodile-fishing was a failure. As one might ex- 
pect, from the power even of a salmon, the tug of a crocodile 
was terribly strong. 

The corpse of a boy floated past the ship ; a monstrous 
crocodile rushed at it with the speed of a greyhound, caught 
it, and shook it as a terrier dog does a rat. Others dashed at 
the prey, each with his powerful tail causing the water to 
churn and froth as he furiously tore off a piece. In a few 
seconds it was all gone. The sight was frightful to behold. 
The Shire swarmed with crocodiles ; we counted sixty -seven 
of these repulsive reptiles on a single bank, but they are not 
as fierce as they are in some rivers. " Crocodiles," says Cap- 
tain Tuckey, " are so plentiful in the Congo, near the rapids, 
and so frequently carry off the women, who at daylight go 
down to the river for water, that, while they are filling their 
calabashes, one of the party is usually employed in throwing 
large stones into the water outside." Here, either a calabash 
on a long pole is used in drawing water, or a fence is planted. 
The natives eat the crocodile, but to us the idea of tasting 
the musky-scented, fishy-looking flesh carried the idea of 
cannibalism. Humboldt remarks that in South America the 
alligators of some rivers are more dangerous than in others. 
Alligators differ from crocodiles in the fourth or canine tooth 
going into a hole or socket in the upper jaw, while in the 
crocodile it fits into a notch. The fore foot of the crocodile 
has five toes not webbed ; the hind foot has four toes which 
are webbed ; in the alligator the web is altogether wanting. 



478 MAKOLOLO AND CROCODILE. Chap. XXII. 

They are so much alike that they would no doubt breed to- 
gether. 

One of the crocodiles which was shot had a piece snapped 
off the end of his tail, another had lost a fore foot in righting : 
we saw actual leeches between the teeth, such as are men- 
tioned by Herodotus, but we never witnessed the plover pick- 
ing them out. Their greater fierceness in one part of the 
country than another is doubtless owing to a scarcity of fish ; 
in fact, Captain Tuckey says of that part of the Congo men- 
tioned above, " There are no fish here but catfish," and we 
found that the lake crocodiles, living in clear water, and with 
plenty of fish, scarcely ever attacked man. The Shire teems 
with fish of many different kinds. The only time, as already 
remarked, when its crocodiles are particularly to be dreaded, 
is when the river is in flood. Then the fish are driven from 
their usual haunts, and no game comes down to the river to 
drink, water being abundant in pools inland. Hunger now 
impels the crocodile to lie in wait for the women who come 
to draw water, and on the Zambesi numbers are carried off 
every year. The danger is not so great at other seasons, 
though it is never safe to bathe, or to stoop to drink, where 
one can not see the bottom, especially in the evening. One 
of the Makololo ran down in the dusk to the river, and, as he 
was busy tossing the water to his mouth with his hand in the 
manner peculiar to the natives, a crocodile rose suddenly from 
the bottom, and caught him by the hand. The limb of a tree 
was fortunately within reach, and he had presence of mind to 
lay hold of it. Both tugged and pulled; ^he crocodile for 
his dinner, and the man for dear life. For a time, it appeared 
doubtful whether a dinner or a life was to be sacrificed ; but 
the man held on, and the monster let the hand go, leaving the 
deep marks of his ugly teeth in it. 



Chap. XXII. EETURN OF MR. THORNTON. 479 

During our detention, in expectation of the permanent rise 
of the river in March, Dr. Kirk and Mr. C. Livingstone col- 
lected numbers of the wading birds of the marshes, and made 
pleasant additions to our salted provisions in geese, ducks, 
and hippopotamus flesh. One of the comb or knob-nosed 
geese, on being strangled in order to have its skin preserved 
without injury, continued to breathe audibly by the broken 
humerus, or wing-bone, and other means had to be adopted 
to put it out of pain. This was as if a man on the gallows 
were to continue to breathe by a broken arm-bone, and afford- 
ed us an illustration of the fact that, in birds, the vital air 
penetrates every part of the interior of their bodies. The 
breath passes through and round about the lungs — bathes the 
surfaces of the viscera, and enters the cavities of the bones ; 
it even penetrates into some spaces between the muscles of the 
neck — and thus not only is the most perfect oxygenation of 
the blood secured, but, the temperature of the blood being- 
very high, the air in every part is rarefied, and the great light- 
ness and vigor provided for that the habits of birds require. 
Several birds were found by Dr. Kirk to have marrow in the 
tibiae, though these bones are generally described as hollow. 

During the period of our detention on the shallow part of 
the river in March, Mr. Thornton came up to us from Shu- 
panga : he had, as before narrated, left the expedition in 1859, 
and joined Baron van der Decken in the journey to Kiliman- 
jaro, when, by an ascent of the mountain to the height of 
8000 feet, it was first proved to be covered with perpetual 
snow, and the previous information respecting it, given by 
the Church of England Missionaries, Krapf and Eebman, con- 
firmed. It is now well known that the baron subsequently 
ascended the Kilimanjaro to 14,000 feet, and ascertained its 
highest peak to be at least 20,000 feet above the sea. Mr. 



-180 HIS DEATH AND GRAVE. Ch^j>. XXII. 

Thornton made the map of the first journey, at Shupanga, 
from materials collected when with the baron, and, when that 
work was accomplished, followed us. He was then directed 
to examine geologically the Cataract district, but not to ex- 
pose himself to contact with the Ajawa until the feelings of 
that tribe should be ascertained. 

The members of Bishop Mackenzie's party had, on the loss 
of their head, fled from Magomero on the highlands down to 
Chibisa's, in the low-lying Shire Valley ; and Thornton, find- 
ing them suffering from want of animal food, kindly volun- 
teered to go across thence to Tette, and bring a supply of 
goats and sheep. We were not aware of this step, to which 
the generosity of his nature prompted him, till two days after 
he had started. In addition to securing supplies for the Uni- 
versities' Mission, he brought some for the Expedition, and 
took bearings, by which he hoped to connect his former work 
at Tette with the mountains in the Shire district. The toil 
of this journey was too much for his strength, as, with the ad- 
dition of great scarcity of water, it had been for that of Dr. 
Kirk and Eae, and he returned in a sadly haggard and ex- 
hausted condition ; diarrhoea supervened, and that ended in 
dysentery and fever, which terminated fatally on the 21st of 
April, 1863. He received the unremitting attentions of Dr. 
Kirk, and Dr. Meller, surgeon of the Pioneer, during the fort- 
night of his illness ; and as he had suffered very little from 
fever, or any other disease, in Africa, we had entertained 
strong, hopes that his youth and unimpaired constitution 
would have carried him through. During the night of the 
20th his mind wandered so much that we could not ascertain 
his last wishes ; and on the morning of the 21st, to our great 
sorrow, he died. He was buried on the 22d near a large tree 
on the right bank of the Shire, about five hundred yards from 



Chap. XXII. SLAVE-TRADE AND FAMINE. 481 

the lowest of the Murchison Cataracts, and close to a rivulet, 
at which the Lady Nyassa and Pioneer lay. 

ISTo words can convey an adequate idea of the scene of 
wide-spread desolation which the once pleasant Shire Valley 
now presented. Instead of smiling villages and crowds of 
people coming with things for sale, scarcely a soul was to be 
seen ; and when by chance one lighted on a native his frame 
bore the impress of hunger, and his countenance the look of 
a cringing broken-spiritedness. A drought had visited the 
land after the slave - hunting panic swept over it. Had it 
been possible to conceive the thorough depopulation which 
had ensued, we should have avoided coming up the river. 
Large masses of the people had fled down to- the Shire, only 
anxious to get the river between them and their enemies. 
Most of the food had been left behind ; and famine and starv- 
ation had cut off so many, that the remainder were too few 
to bury the dead. The corpses we saw floating down the riv- 
er were only a remnant of those that had perished, whom 
their friends, from weakness, could not bury, nor overgorged 
crocodiles devour. It is true that famine caused a great por- 
tion of this waste of human life ; but the slave-trade must be 
deemed the chief agent in the ruin, because, as we were in- 
formed, in former droughts all the people flocked from the 
hills down to the marshes, which are capable of yielding crops 
of maize in less than three months at any time of the year, 
and now they were afraid to do so. A few, encouraged by 
the Mission in the attempt to cultivate, had their little patch- 
es robbed as successive swarms of fugitives came from the 
hills. Who can blame these outcasts from house and home 
for stealing to save their wretched lives, or wonder that the 
owners protected the little all, on which their own lives de- 
pended, with club and spear? We were informed by Mr. 

Hh 



482 MARSH CULTURE. Chap. XXII. 

Waller of the dreadful blight which had befallen the once 
smiling Shire Valley. His words, though strong, failed to im- 
press us with the reality. In fact, they were received, as 
some may accept our own, as tinged with exaggeration; but 
when our eyes beheld the last mere driblets of this cup of 
woe, we for the first time felt that the enormous wrongs in- 
flicted on our fellow -men by slaving are beyond exaggera- 
tion. 

The plan adopted by these Manganja Highlanders to raise 
crops on the soft black mud of the marshes might not occur 
to agriculturists of other countries. Coarse river-sand is put 
down on the rich dark ooze in spadefuls at about two feet 
from each other, and the maize planted therein. In vegeta- 
ting, the roots are free to take what they require from the too 
fat soil beneath, and also atmospheric constituents through 
the sand. Nearly the same thing is done when the soil is 
more solid, but too damp. A hole is dug about a foot in 
depth, the seed is thrown in and covered with a spadeful of 
sand, and the result is a flourishing crop ; where, without the 
sand, the rich but too wet loam would yield nothing. In this 
way the people saved their lives in former droughts, but now 
the slave-hunting panic seemed to have destroyed all pres- 
ence of mind. The few wretched survivors, even after our 
arrival, were overpowered by an apathetic lethargy. They 
attempted scarcely any cultivation, which, for people so given 
to agriculture as they are, was very remarkable ; they were 
seen daily devouring the corn-stalks which had sprung up in 
the old plantations, and which would, if let alone, have yield- 
ed corn in a month. They could not be aroused from their 
lethargy. Famine benumbs all the faculties. We tried to 
induce some to exert themselves to procure food, but failed. 
They had lost all their former spirit, and with lacklustre eyes, 



Chap. XXII. SKELETONS, THEIR POSITIONS. 483 

scarcely meeting ours, and in whining tones, replied to every 
proposition for their benefit, "No, no!" (Aif ail) 

Wherever we took a walk, human skeletons were seen in 
every direction, and it was painfully interesting to observe 
the different postures in which the poor wretches had breathed 
their last. A whole heap had been thrown down a slope be- 
hind a village, where the fugitives often crossed the river 
from the east ; and in one hut of the same village no fewer 
than twenty drums had been collected, probably the ferry- 
man's fees. Many had ended their misery under shady trees 
— others under projecting crags in the hills — while others 
lay in their huts, with closed doors, which, when opened, dis- 
closed the mouldering corpse, with the poor rags round the 
loins — the skull fallen off the pillow — the little skeleton of 
the child, that had perished first, rolled up in a mat between 
two large skeletons. The sight of this desert, but eighteen 
months ago a well peopled valley, now literally strewn with 
human bones, forced the conviction upon us that the destruc- 
tion of human life in the Middle Passage, however great, con- 
stitutes but a small portion of the waste, and made us feel 
that unless the slave-trade — that monster iniquity, which has 
so long brooded over Africa — is put down, lawful commerce 
can not be established. 

We believed that, if it were possible to get a steamer upon 
the Lake, we could, by her means, put a check on the slavers 
from the East Coast, and aid more effectually still in the sup- 
pression of the slave-trade by introducing, by way of the Eo- 
vuma, a lawful traffic in ivory. We therefore unscrewed the 
Lady Nyassa at a rivulet about five hundred yards below the 
first cataract, and began to make a road over the thirty-five 
or forty miles of land portage by which to carry her up piece- 
meal; After mature consideration, we could not imagine a 



484 ROAD-MAKING. Chap. XXII. 

more noble work of benevolence than thus to introduce light 
and liberty into a quarter of this fair earth which human 
lust has converted into the nearest possible resemblance of 
what we conceive the infernal regions to be, and we sacrificed 
much of our 'private resources as an offering for the promo- 
tion of so good a cause. 

The chief part of the labor of road-making consisted in cut- 
ting down trees and removing stones. The country being 
covered with open forest, a small tree had to be cut about 
every fifty or sixty yards. The land near the river was so 
very much intersected by ravines, that search had to be made, 
a mile from its banks, for more level ground. Experienced 
Hottentot drivers would have taken Cape wagons without 
any other trouble than that of occasionally cutting down a 
tree. No tsetse infested this district, and the cattle brought 
from Johanna flourished on the abundant pasture. The first 
half mile of road led up, by a gradual slope, to an altitude of 
two hundred feet above the ship, and a sensible difference of 
climate was felt even there. For the remainder of the dis- 
tance the height increased, till, at the uppermost cataract, we 
were more than 1200 feet above the sea. The country here, 
having recovered from the effects of the drought, was bright 
with young green woodland, and mountains of the same re- 
freshing hue. But the absence of the crowds which had at- 
tended us as we carried up the boat, when the women follow- 
ed us for miles with fine meal, vegetables, and fat fowls for 
sale, and the boys were ever ready for a little job — and the 
oppressive stillness bore heavily on our spirits. The Portu- 
guese of Tette had very effectually removed our laborers. 
Not an ounce of fresh provisions could be obtained except 
what could be shot, and even the food for our native crew had 
to be brought one hundred and fifty miles from the Zambesi. 



Chap. XXII. REMONSTRANCE TO LISBON. 485 

The diet of salt provisions and preserved meats without 
vegetables, with the depression of spirits caused by seeing 
how effectually a few wretched convicts, aided by the con- 
nivance of officials, of whom better might have been hoped, 
could counteract our best efforts, and turn intended good to 
certain evil, brought on attacks of dysentery, which went the 
round of the Expedition ; and, Dr. Kirk and Charles Living- 
stone having suffered most severely, it was deemed advisable 
that they should go home. This measure was necessary, 
though much to the regret of all ; for, having done so much, 
they were naturally anxious to be present, when, by the es- 
tablishing ourselves on the Lake, all our efforts should be 
crowned with success. After it had been decided that these 
two officers, and all the whites who could be spared, should 
be sent down to the sea for a passage to England, Dr. Living- 
stone was seized in May with a severe attack of dysentery, 
which continued for a month, and reduced him to a shadow. 
Dr. Kirk kindly remained in attendance till the worst was 
passed. The parting took place on the 19th of May. 

We had still the hope that, by means of a strong remon- 
strance sent to Lisbon against the Portuguese officials in Tette 
engaging in the slave-hunting forays, some means would be 
resorted to for preventing slavers for the future following on 
our footsteps and neutralizing our efforts. The appeal, how- 
ever, we subsequently ascertained, produced only a shoal of 
promises from the Portuguese ministry. New orders were to 
be sent out to the officials to render us every assistance, and 
a request was made for information respecting Dr. Living- 
stone's geographical discoveries, for the especial use of the 
Minister of Marine and the Colonies ; though it was notorious 
that his excellency had made use of our previous information 
in constructing a map, in which, by changing the spelling, he 



486 PORTUGUESE STATESMEN. Chap. XXII. 

had attempted to prove that Dr. Livingstone had made no 
discoveries at all. Truly our object was not so much discov- 
ery as a desire to lead the nation, which his excellency's coun- 
trymen had so enslaved and degraded, to a state of freedom 
and civilization. We regret to have to make this statement ; 
but it was a monstrous mistake to believe in the honor of the 
government of Portugal, or in their having a vestige of desire 
to promote the amelioration of Africa. One ought to hope 
the best of every one, giving, if possible, credit for good in- 
tentions ; but, though deeply sensible of obligations to indi- 
viduals of the nation, and anxious to renew the expressions 
of respect formerly used, we must declare the conduct of Port- 
uguese statesmen to Africa to be simply infamous. 

After a few miles of road were completed and the oxen 
broken in, we resolved to try and render ourselves independ- 
ent of the South for fresh provisions by going in a boat up 
the Shire, above the Cataracts, to the tribes at the foot of 
Lake ISTyassa, who were still untouched by the Ajawa inva- 
sion. In furtherance of this plan, Dr. Livingstone and Mr. 
Eae determined to walk up to examine, and, if need be, mend 
the boat which had been left two seasons previously hung up 
to the limb of a large shady tree, before attempting to carry 
another past the Cataracts. The Pioneer, which was to be 
left in charge of our active and most trustworthy gunner, Mr. 
Edward Young, E. N., was thoroughly roofed over with eu- 
phorbia branches and grass, so as completely to protect her 
decks from the sun : she also received daily a due amount of 
man-of-war scrubbing and washing; and, besides having ev- 
ery thing put in shipshape fashion, was every evening swung 
out into the middle of the river, for the sake of the greater 
amount of air which circulated there. In addition to their 
daily routine work of the ship, the three stokers, one sailor, 



Chap. XXII. WOMAN WOUNDED. 487 

and one carpenter — now our complement — were encouraged 
to hunt for Guinea-fowl, which, in June, when the water in- 
land is dried up, come in large flocks to the river's banks, and 
roosfc on the trees at night. Every thing that can be done to 
keep mind and body employed tends to prevent fever. 

During the period of convalescence, repairs were carried on 
on the Pioneer's engines. Trees were sawn into planks for 
paddle-floats by two carpenters from Senna, and a garden 
made for vegetables, to be irrigated by a pump from the 
stream : our plot of ground was manured — a new style of 
agriculture to the people of this country — the wheat was sown 
in May, when the weather was cold and damp, and it grew 
beautifully ; this was interesting, as showing how easily a 
Mission might be supplied with corn by leading out one of 
the numerous springs which run among the hills. Good 
Bishop Mackenzie was fully aware of this, but unfortunately 
sowed his crop at the wrong time of the year. Had we been 
able to continue to attend to ours, we should have had a crop 
in about four months' time; but duty soon called us else- 
where. 

While we were employed in these operations, some of the 
poor starved people about had been in the habit of crossing 
the river, - and reaping the self-sown mapira in the old gardens 
of their countrymen. In the afternoon of the 9th a canoe 
came floating down empty, and shortly after a woman was 
seen swimming near the other side, which was about two 
hundred yards distant from us. Our native crew manned 
the boat and rescued her ; when brought on board, she was 
found to have an arrow-head eight or ten inches long in her 
back, below the ribs, and slanting up through the diaphragm 
and left lung toward the heart — she had been shot from be- 
hind when stooping. Air was coming out of the wound, and, 



488 TENACITY OF LIFE. Chap. XXII. 

there being but an inch of the barbed arrow-head visible, it 
was thought better not to run the risk of her dying under 
the operation necessary for its removal ; so we carried her 
up to her own hut. One of her relatives was less scrupu- 
lous, for he cut out the arrow and part of the lung. Mr. 
Young sent her occasionally portions of native corn, and, 
strange to say, found that she not only became well, but 
stout. The constitution of these people seems to have a won- 
derful power of self-repair — and it could be no slight priva- 
tion which had cut off the many thousands that we saw dead 
around us. 

We regretted that, in consequence of Dr. Meller having now 
sole medical charge, we could not have his company in our 
projected trip ; but he found employment in botany and nat- 
ural history after the annual sickly season of March, April, 
and May was over, and his constant presence was not so much 
required at the ship. Later in the year, when he could be 
well spared, he went down the river to take up an appoint- 
ment he had been offered in Madagascar, but, unfortunately, 
was so severely tried by illness while detained at the coast, 
that for nearly two years he was not able to turn his abilities 
as a naturalist to account by proceeding to that island. We 
have no doubt but he will yet distinguish himself in that un- 
trodden field. 



Chap. XXIII. CULTIVATION— COTTON. 439 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

June 16th, 1863, start for the Upper Cataracts.— Cultivation. — Cotton. — Huts 
empty, or tenanted by Skeletons. — Buffalo-birds and dread of the poisoned 
Arrow. — Kombi, a species of Strophantus, the Poison employed. — The 'Nga 
Poison. — Its Effects. — Instinct in Man. — Mukuru-Madse. — Sanu, or prickly- 
seeded Grass. — Its Use. — Native Paths. — Guinea-fowls. — Cotton Patches. — 
Expedition recalled. — No other Course open to us, Labor being all swept 
away by Portuguese Slave-trading. — Mr. Waller witnesses a small part of 
the Trade. — Friendliness of the Ajawa and Makololo to the English. — Try 
to take another Boat past the Cataracts. — Loss of the Boat. — Penitence of 
the Losers. — The Cataracts. — Geology. 

On the 16th of June we started for the Upper Cataracts 
with a mule-cart, our road lying a distance of a mile west 
from the river. We saw many of the deserted dwellings 
of the people who formerly came to us, and were very much 
struck by the extent of land under cultivation, though that, 
compared with the whole country, is very small. Large patch- 
es of mapira continued to grow, as it is said it does from the 
roots for three years. The mapira was mixed with tall bush- 
es of the Congo-bean, castor-oil plants, and cotton. The larg- 
est patch of this kind we paced, and found it to be six hund- 
red and thirty paces on one side ; the rest were from one acre 
to three, and many not more than one third of an acre. The 
cotton — of very superior quality — was now dropping off the 
bushes, to be left to rot. — there was no one to gather what 
would have been of so much value in Lancashire. The huts, 
in the different villages we entered, were standing quite per- 
fect. The mortars for pounding corn — the stones for grind- 
ing it — the water and beer pots — the empty corn-safes and 
kitchen utensils, were all untouched ; and most of the doors 



490 BUFFALOES AND BUFFALO-BIEDS. Chap. XXIII. 

were shut; as if the starving owners had gone out to wander 
in search of roots or fruits in the forest, and had never re- 
turned. When opened, several huts revealed a ghastly sight 
of human skeletons. Some were seen in such unnatural po- 
sitions as to give the idea that they had expired in a faint, 
when trying to reach something to allay the gnawings of 
hunger. 

We took several of the men as far as the Mukuru-Madse 
for the sake of the change of air and for occupation, and also 
to secure for the ships a supply of buffalo meat — as those an- 
imals were reported to be in abundance on that stream. But, 
though it was evident from the tracks that the report was 
true, it was impossible to get a glimpse of them. The grass 
being taller than we were, and pretty thickly planted, they 
always knew of our approach before we saw them. And the 
first intimation we had of their being near was the sound they 
made in rushing over the stones, breaking the branches, and 
knocking their horns against each other. Once, when seek- 
ing a ford for the cart at sunrise, we saw a herd slowly wend- 
ing up the hill-side from the water. Sending for a rifle, and 
stalking with intense eagerness for a fat beefsteak, instead of 
our usual fare of salted provisions, we got so near that we 
could hear the bulls uttering their hoarse deep low, but could 
see nothing except the mass of yellow grass in front; sud- 
denly the buffalo-birds sounded their alarm-whistle, and away 
dashed the troop, and we got sight of neither birds nor beasts. 
This would be no country for a sportsman except when the 
grass is short. The animals are wary, from the dread they 
have of the poisoned arrows. Those of the natives who do 
hunt are deeply imbued with the hunting spirit, and follow 
the game with a stealthy perseverance and cunning quite ex- 
traordinary. The arrow making no noise, the herd is follow- 



Chap. XXIII. 



POISONED ARROWS. 



491 



ed up until the poison takes effect, and the wounded animal 
falls out. It is then patiently watched till it drops — a por- 
tion of meat round the wound is cut away, and all the rest 
eaten. 

Poisoned arrows are made in two pieces. An iron barb is 
firmly fastened to one end of a small wand of wood, ten inch- 
es or a foot long ; the other end of which, fined down to a 
long point, is nicely fitted, though not otherwise secured, in 






£3^5^. 




^fMWm 40Hi 



A. Common form of Ajawa arrow iron head, with barbs. 

B. " " Manganja, poisoned at head and barbs, and neck. 

C. Manner of inserting arrow-head into the shaft. 

D. Entire arrow nearly four feet long, and feathered. 

the hollow of the reed, which forms the arrow shaft. The 
wood immediately below the iron head is smeared with the 
poison. When the arrow is shot into an animal, the reed ei- 
ther falls to the ground at once, or is very soon brushed off 
by the bushes ; but the iron barb and poisoned upper part of 
the wood remain in the wound. If made in one piece, the 
arrow would often be torn out, head and all, by the long shaft 
catching in the underwood, or striking against trees. The 
poison vused here, and called Jcombi, is obtained from a species 
of strophanthus, and is very virulent. Dr. Kirk found by an 
accidental experiment on himself that it acts by lowering the 
pulse. In using his tooth-brush, which had been in a pocket 
containing a little of the poison, he noticed a bitter taste, but 



492 THE 'N&Sl POISON. Chap. XXIII. 

attributed it to his having sometimes used the handle in tak- 
ing quinine. Though the quantity was small, it immediately 
showed its power by lowering his pulse, which at the time 
had been raised by a cold, and next day he was perfectly re- 
stored. Not much can be inferred from a single case of this 
kind, but it is possible that the kombi may turn out a valua- 
ble remedy ; and, as Professor Sharpey has conducted a se- 
ries of experiments with this substance, we look with interest 
for the results. An alkaloid has been obtained from it simi- 
lar to strychnine. There is no doubt that all kinds of wild 
animals die from the effects of poisoned arrows, except the 
elephant and hippopotamus. The amount of poison that this 
little weapon can convey into their systems being too small 
to kill those huge beasts, the hunters resort to the beam-trap 
instead. 

Another kind of poison was met with on Lake Nyassa 
which was said to be used exclusively for killing men. It 
was put on small wooden arrow-heads, and carefully protect- 
ed by a piece of maize-leaf tied round it. It caused numb- 
ness of the tongue when the smallest particle was tasted. The 
Bushmen of the northern part of the Kalahari were seen ap- 
plying the entrails of a small caterpillar which they termed 
'Nga to their arrows. This venom was declared to be so 
powerful in producing delirium, that a man, in dying, re- 
turned in imagination to a state of infancy, and would call for 
his mother's breast. Lions, when shot with it, are said to 
perish in agonies. The poisonous ingredient in this case may 
be derived from the plant on which the caterpillar feeds. It 
is difficult to conceive by what sort of experiments the prop- 
erties of these poisons, known for generations, were proved. 
Probably the animal instincts, which have become so obtuse 
by civilization, that children in England eat the berries of the 



Chap. XXIII. THE MUKURU-MADSE. 493 

deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) without suspicion, were 
in the early uncivilized state much more keen. In some 
points instinct is still retained among savages. It is related 
that in the celebrated voyage of the French navigator Bou- 
gainville, a young lady, who had assumed the male attire, per- 
formed all the hard duties incident to the calling of a com- 
mon sailor, and, even as a servant to the geologist, carried a 
bag of stones and specimens over hills and dales without a 
complaint, and without having her sex suspected by her asso- 
ciates ; but on landing among the savages of one of the South 
Sea Islands, she was instantly recognized as a female. They 
began to show their impressions in a way that compelled her 
to confess her sex, and throw herself on the protection of the 
commander, which of course was granted. In like manner, 
the earlier portions of the human family may have had their 
instincts as to plants more highly developed than any of their 
descendants — if, indeed, much more knowledge than we usu- 
ally suppose be not the effect of direct revelation from above. 
The Mukuru-Madse has a deep rocky bed. The water is 
generally about four feet deep, and fifteen or twenty yards 
broad. Before reaching it we passed five or six gullies ; but 
beyond it the country, for two or three miles from the river, 
was comparatively smooth. The long grass was overrunning 
all the native paths, and one species (sanu), which has a sharp 
barbed seed a quarter of an inch in length, enters every pore 
of woolen clothing, and highly irritates the skin. From its 
hard, sharp point a series of minute barbs are laid back, and 
give the seed a hold wherever it enters ; the slightest touch 
gives it an entering motion, and the little hooks prevent its 
working out. These seeds are so abundant in some spots 
that the inside of the stocking becomes worse than the rough- 
est hair shirt. It is, however, an excellent self-sower, and 



494 GUINEA-FOWLS— COTTON-PATCHES. Chap. XXIII. 

fine fodder ; it rises to the height of common meadow-grass in 
England, and would be a capital plant for spreading over a 
new country not so abundantly supplied with grasses as 
this is. 

We have sometimes noticed two or three leaves together 
pierced through by these seeds, and thus made, as it were, 
into wings to carry them to any soil suited to their growth. 

We always follow the native paths, though they are gen- 
erally not more than fifteen inches broad, and so often have 
deep little holes in them, made for the purpose of setting 
traps for small animals, and are so much obscured by the 
long grass that one has to keep one's eyes on the ground 
more than is pleasant. In spite, however, of all drawbacks, 
it is vastly more easy to travel on these tracks than to go 
straight over uncultivated ground or virgin forest. A path 
usually leads to some village, though sometimes it turns out 
to be a mere game-track leading nowhere. 

In going north we came into a part called Mpemba, where 
Chibisa was owned as chief, but the people did not know that 
he had been assassinated by the Portuguese Terera. A great 
deal of grain was lying round the hut where we spent the 
night. Yery large numbers of turtle-doves feasted undis- 
turbed on the tall-stalked mapira ears, and we easily secured 
plenty of fine fat Gruinea-fowls, now allowed to feed leisurely 
in the deserted gardens. The reason assigned for all this list- 
less improvidence was, "There are no women to grind the 
corn: all are dead." 

The cotton-patches in all cases seemed to have been so well 
cared for, and kept so free of weeds formerly, that, though 
now untended, but few weeds had sprung up ; and the bushes 
were thus preserved in the annual grass-burnings. Many 
baobab-trees grow in different spots, and the few people seen 



Chap. XXIII. THE AJAWA AND MANGANJA. 495 

were using the white pulp found between the seeds to make 
a pleasant subacid drink. 

On passing Malango, near the uppermost Cataract, not a 
soul was to be seen ; bat, as we rested opposite a beautiful 
tree-covered island, the merry voices of children at play fell 
on our ears — the parents had fled thither for protection from 
the slave-hunting Ajawa, still urged on by the occasional vis- 
its of the Portuguese agents from Tette. The Ajawa, instead 
of passing below the Cataracts, now avoided us, and crossed 
over to the east side, near to the tree on which we had hung 
the boat. Those of the Manganja, to whom we could make 
ourselves known, readily came to us; but the majority had 
lost all confidence in themselves, in each other, and in every 
one else. The boat had been burned about three months 
previously, and the Manganja were very anxious that we 
should believe that this had been the act of the Ajawa; but, 
on scanning the spot, we saw that it was more likely to have 
caught fire in the grass-burning of the country. Had we in- 
tended to be so long in returning to it, we should have hoist- 
ed it bottom upward ; for, as it was, it is probable that a quan- 
tity of dried leaves lay inside, and a spark ignited the whole. 
All the trees within fifty yards were scorched and killed, and 
the nails, iron, and copper sheathing all lay undisturbed be- 
neath. Had the Ajawa done the deed, they would have taken 
away the copper and iron. 

Our hopes of rendering ourselves independent of the south 
for provisions by means of this boat being thus disappointed, 
we turned back with the intention of carrying another up to 
the same spot ; and, in order to find level ground for this, we 
passed across from the Shire at Malango to the upper part 
of the stream Lesungwe. A fine, active, intelligent fellow, 
called Pekila, guided us, and was remarkable as almost the 



496 EEC ALL OF THE EXPEDITION. Chap. XXIII. 

only one of the population left with, any spirit in him. The 
depressing effect which the slave-hunting scourge has upon 
the native mind, though little to be wondered at, is sad, very 
sad to witness. Musical instruments, mats, pillows, mortars 
for pounding meal, were lying about unused, and becoming 
the prey of the white ants. With all their little comforts 
destroyed, the survivors were thrown still farther back into 
barbarism. 

It is of little importance, perhaps, to any but travelers to 
notice that in occupying one night a well-built hut, which 
had been shut up for some time, the air inside at once gave 
us a chill and an attack of fever, both of which vanished 
when the place was well ventilated by means of a fire. We 
have frequently observed that lighting a fire early in the 
mornings, even in the hottest time of the year, gives fresh- 
ness to the whole house, and removes that feeling of close- 
ness and languor which a hot climate induces. 

On the night of the 1st of July, 1863, several loud peals of 
thunder awoke us ; the moon was shining brightly, and not 
a cloud to be seen. All the natives remarked on the clear- 
ness of the sky at the time, and next morning said, "We 
thought it was God" (Morungo). 

On arriving at the ship on the 2d of July, we found a dis- 
patch from Earl Eussell, containing instructions for the with- 
drawal of the Expedition. The devastation caused by slave- 
hunting and famine lay all around. The labor had been as 
completely swept away from the Great Shire Valley as it had 
been from the Zambesi, wherever Portuguese intrigue or pow- 
er extended. The continual forays of Mariano had spread 
ruin and desolation on our southeast as far as Mount Clar- 
endon. 

While this was going on in our rear, the Tette slave-hunt- 



Chap. XXIII. HOPELESSNESS OF A CHANGE. 497 

ers from the west had stimulated the Ajawa to sweep all the 
Manganja off the hills on our east, and slaving parties for 
this purpose were still passing the Shire above the Cataracts. 
In addition to the confession of the Governor of Tette of an 
intention to go on with this slaving in accordance with the 
counsel of his elder brother at Mozambique, we had reason to 
believe that slavery went on under the eye of his excellency 
the governor general himself, and this was subsequently cor- 
roborated by our recognizing two women at Mozambique who 
had lived within a hundred yards of the Mission -station at 
Magomero. They were well known to our attendants, and 
had formed a part of a gang of several hundreds taken to 
Mozambique by the Ajawa at the very time when his excel- 
lency was entertaining English officers with anti-slavery pa- 
lavers. To any one who uncjerstancls how minute the in- 
formation is which Portuguese governors possess by means 
of their own slaves, and through gossiping traders who seek 
to curry their favor, it is idle to assert that all this slaving 
goes on without their approval and connivance. 

If more had been wanted to prove the hopelessness of pro- 
ducing any change in the system which has prevailed ever 
since our allies, the Portuguese, entered the country, we had 
it in the impunity with which the freebooter Terera, who had 
murdered Chibisa, was allowed to carry on his forays. Bel- 
chior, another marauder, had been checked, but was still al- 
lowed to make war, as they term slave-hunting. 

Mr. Horace Waller was living for some five months on 
Mount Morambala, a position from which the whole process 
of the slave-trade and depopulation of the country around 
could be well noted. The mountain overlooks the Shire, the 
beautiful meanderings of which are distinctly seen, on clear 
days, for thirty miles. This river was for some time supposed 

Ii 



498 PAYMENT FOR CANOE-WORK. Chap. XXIII. 

to be closed against Mariano, who, as a mere matter of form, 
was declared a rebel against the Portuguese flag. When, 
however, it became no longer possible to keep up the sham, 
the river was thrown open to him ; and Mr. Waller has seen 
in a single day from fifteen to twenty canoes of different sizes 
going down, laden with slaves, to the Portuguese settlements 
from the so-called rebel camp. These cargoes were com- 
posed entirely of women and children. For three months 
this traffic was incessant, and at last, so completely was the 
mask thrown off, that one of the officials came to pay a visit 
to Bishop Tozer on another part of the same mountain, and, 
combining business with pleasure, collected payment for some 
canoe-work done for the Missionary party, and with this pur- 
chased slaves from the rebels, who had only to be hailed from 
the bank of the river. Whea he had concluded the bargain 
he trotted the slaves out for inspection in Mr. Waller's pres- 
ence. This official, Senhor Mesquita, was the only officer 
who could be forced to live at the Kongone. From certain 
circumstances in his life, he had fallen under the power of the 
local government ; all the other Custom-house officers refused 
to go to Kongone, so here poor Mesquita must live on a mis- 
erable pittance — must live, and perhaps slave, sorely against 
his will. His name is not brought forward with a view of 
throwing any odium on his character. The disinterested 
kindness which he showed to Dr. Meller and others forbids 
that he should be mentioned by us with any thing like un- 
kindness. 

Other parties were out to the southeast of Senna, slaving 
for exportation from Inhambane. While we were at Shu- 
panga, an embassy was sent to us with an offer of ivory, and 
all the land not occupied by the Zulus, if we would only send 
a few people to expel the Senna slave-hunters from the neigh- 



Chap. XXIII. PORTUGUESE STATESMEN. 499 

borliood. Here, as with what are called the emigrant Boers 
of the interior of the Cape, the secret of power is the posses- 
sion of gunpowder; bowmen can not stand the attack of mus- 
kets, and whoever possesses access to a sea-port has the pow- 
er of carrying on slaving to any extent, for on the East Coast 
there is no restriction in the introduction of arms and ammu- 
nition. The laws are quite as stringent against these articles 
as at the Cape ; but, like the laws for the abolition of slavery, 
no one obeys them — they are only for quotation and self-glo- 
rification in Europe. 

Under all* these considerations, with the fact that we had 
not found the Eovuma so favorable for navigation at the 
time of our visit as we expected, it was impossible not to co- 
incide in the wisdom of our withdrawal ; but we deeply re- 
gretted that we had ever given credit to the Portuguese gov- 
ernment for any desire to ameliorate the condition of the Af- 
rican race ; for, with half the labor and expense any where 
else, we should have made an indelible mark of improvement 
on a section of the Continent. Viewing Portuguese states- 
men in the light of the laws they have passed for the sup- 
pression of slavery and the slave-trade, and by the standard 
of the high character of our own public men, it can not be 
considered weakness to have believed in the sincerity of the 
anxiety to aid our enterprise professed by the Lisbon minis- 
try. We hoped to benefit both Portuguese and Africans by 
introducing free trade and Christianity. Our allies, unfortu- 
nately, can not see the slightest benefit in any measure that 
does not imply raising themselves up by thrusting others 
down. The official* paper of the Lisbon government has 

* The Portuguese government lately employed a gentleman named Lacerda 
to write a series of papers in their official journal, the "Diario de Lisboa," to 
prove that Dr. Livingstone made a great mistake in ascribing any merit to 



500 THE KEV. HENRY ROWLEY. Chap. XXIII. 

since let us know " that their policy was directed to frustra- 
ting the grasping designs of the British government to the do- 
minion of Eastern Africa." We, who were on the spot and 

Speke and Grant's discovery of what appears to be the main source of the Nile. 
The ancient Portuguese missionaries, Jeronymo Lobo and Joao dos Santos, 
and others, it seems, preceded our countrymen. In fact, this clever writer 
proves to his own satisfaction that the English have discovered next to nothing 
in Africa. As no one out of Portugal requires a refutation of these loose state- 
ments, we turn to a question of more importance. Do the Portuguese minis- 
try, by employing the writer of these papers, mean to indorse the deeds of their 
officials in Africa ? We have believed them to be incapable of so doing ; but 
they quoted with so much eagerness a private note from the Rev. Henry Row- 
ley, which he never intended for publication, that we give our friend's opinion 
as to the chief cause of the disasters which befell the Mission of which he was a 
member. In the intercourse between the Mission and Expedition not a single 
break occurred in our friendly intercourse and good-will. 

" Bath, February 22, 1865. 

"Dear Dr. Livingstone, — Waller has written to me on the subject of my 
letter to Mr. Glover, and he tells me that a certain Portuguese publication, pro- 
fessedly quoting from that letter, says in substance — 

" ' The Rev. Mr. Rowley states that the attack by Dr. Livingstone on the Aja- 
wa was the cause of the final non-success of the Mission.' 

' 1 1 never said that ; nor have I at any time said any thing from which such 
a statement could be justly inferred. 

" The misfortunes of the Mission were owing to loss of stores, the famine, 
and, above all, to the evil practices of the Portuguese, who kindled and kept up 
wars between the tribes, in order that they might purchase the prisoners for 
slaves. 

" The Portuguese were in our hour of need of great service to us in supply- 
ing us with food. Personally, we missionaries had much to thank them for ; 
but their conduct toward the natives is past description bad ; and I am entire- 
ly one with you in your denouncement of such conduct. 

"I have always said and thought you did well in releasing the slaves, and in 
going against the Ajawa under the idea that they were a mere slaving horde. 
My letter to Mr. Glover was not written to blame you for what you had done, 
nor to throw the responsibility of our acts upon you, but to make known to our 
friends at the Cape that you had done what we had done, and that you were 
the first to do it. 

"Had you at that time been in the same mind about our attack upon the 
Ajawa as you were when you wrote to Sir Culling Eardley, my letter would 
never have been written ; and seeing the ill effect it appears to have produced, 
I am very sorry it was ever written. 

"I hope what I have said will meet your wishes. 

' ' Verv trulv vours, Henry Rowley." 



Chap. XXIII. AJAWA AND MAKOLOLO FRIENDSHIP. 501 

behind the scenes, knew that feelings of private benevolence 
had the chief share in the operations undertaken for introduc- 
ing the reign of peace and good-will on the lakes and central 
regions, which for ages have been the abodes of violence and 
bloodshed. But that great change was not to be accomplish- 
ed. The narrow-minded would ascribe all that was attempted 
to the grasping propensity of the English. But the motives 
that actuate many in England, both in public and private life, 
are much more noble than the world gives them credit for. 

Seeing, then, that we were not yet arrived at " the good 
time coming," and that it was quite impossible to take the 
Pioneer down to the sea till the floods of December, we made 
arrangements to screw the Lady Nyassa together ; and, in 
order to improve the time intervening, we resolved to carry 
a boat past the Cataracts a second time, sail along the eastern 
shore of the Lake, and round the northern end, and also col- 
lect data by which to verify the information collected by Col- 
onel Rigby, that the 19,000 slaves who go through the Cus- 
tom-house of Zanzibar annually are chiefly drawn from Lake 
ISTyassa and the Valley of the Shire. 

The people attached to the Mission by Bishop Mackenzie 
now formed a little free community near Chibisa's, supporting 
themselves by cultivating the soil. They imitated in this 
respect the Makololo, who had formed very extensive gar- 
dens, and were now able to sell grain and vegetables to the 
Expedition. The friendly feelings of both these people to- 
ward the English were unmistakable. An instance in proof 
of this may be cited. The Makololo village was about a quar- 
ter of a mile distant from the Mission-huts, one of which was 
accidentally set on fire by the owner ; some loaded guns in- 
side went off as the fire reached the powder, and the Mako- 
lolo, hearing the unwonted sounds of guns in the evening, 



502 WE TRY ANOTHER BOAT. Chap. XXIII. 

seized their arms and rushed to the rescue of the English, sup- 
posing that the j were attacked by an enemy with rlre-arms. 
Notwithstanding their refusal to return with medicine for 
their chief, and in spite of several accusations made against 
them by the black men from the Cape, which, after a good 
deal of careful inquiry, could not be proved ; we remembered 
their noble conduct in saving our lives in the river at Kari- 
vua, and, with this fresh proof of their willingness to risk 
their lives for our countrymen, we selected five of the best 
rowers among them, in the belief that these five were worth 
fifty of any other tribe for the navigation of the Lake, or for 
any difficulty which might occur in the course of our jour- 
ney northward. Our party consisted of twenty natives, some 
of whom were Johanna men, and were supposed to be capa- 
ble of managing the sis oxen which drew the small wagon 
with a boat on it. A team of twelve Cape oxen, with a Hot- 
tentot driver and leader, would have taken the wagon over 
the country we had to pass through with the greatest ease ; 
but no sooner did we get beyond the part of the road already 
made, than our drivers encountered obstructions in the way 
of trees and gullies which it would have been a waste of time 
to have overcome by felling timber and hauling out the 
wagon by block and tackle purchases. The Ajawa and Man- 
ganja settled at Chibisa's were therefore sent for, and they 
took the boat on their shoulders and carried it briskly, in a 
few days, past all the Cataracts except one ; then coming to 
a comparatively still reach of the river, they took advantage 
of it to haul her up a couple of miles. The Makololo had 
her then entirely in charge ; for, being accustomed to rapids 
in their own country, no better boatmen could be desired. 
The river here is very narrow, and even in what are called 
still places the current is very strong, and often obliged them 



Chap. XXIII. LOSS OF THE BOAT. 503 

to haul the boat along by the reeds on the banks, or to hand 
a tow-rope ashore. The reeds are full of cowitch {Dolichos 
muriens), the pods of which are covered with what looks 
a fine velvety down, but is, in reality, a multitude of fine 
prickles, which go in by the million, and caused an itching 
and stinging in the naked bodies of those who were pulling 
the tow-rope that made them wriggle as if stung by a whole 
bed of nettles. Those on board required to be men of ready 
resource with oars and punting-poles, and such they were. 
But, nevertheless, they found, after attempting to pass by a 
rock round which the water rushed in whirls, that the wiser 
plan would be to take the boat ashore and carry her past the 
last Cataract. "When this was reported, the carriers were 
called from the various shady trees under which they had 
taken refuge from the sun. This was mid-winter, but the sun 
is always hot by day here, though the nights are cold. Five 
Zambesi men, who had been all their lives accustomed to 
great heavy canoes — the chief recommendation of which is 
said to be that they can be run against a rock with the full 
force of the current without injury — were very desirous to 
show how much better they could manage our boat than the 
Makololo ; three jumped into her when our backs were turn- 
ed, and two hauled her up a little way ; the tide caught her 
bow, we heard a shout of distress, the rope was out of their 
hands in a moment, and there she was, bottom upward ; a 
turn or two in an eddy, and away she went, like an arrow, 
down the Cataracts. One of the men, in swimming ashore, 
saved a rifle. The whole party ran with all their might along 
the bank, but never more did we see our boat. 

The five performers in this catastrophe approached with 
penitential looks. They had nothing to say, nor had we. 
They bent down slowly, and touched our feet with both 



504 THE PRINCIPAL CATARACTS. Chap. XXIII. 

hands. " Ku kuata moendo" — " to catch the foot"— is their 
way of asking forgiveness. It was so like what we have seen 
a little child do — try to bring a dish unbidden to its papa, 
and letting it fall, burst into a cry of distress — that they were 
only sentenced to go back to the ship, get provisions, and, in 
the ensuing journey on foot, carry as much as they could, 
and thus make up for the loss of the boat. 

It was excessively annoying to lose all this property, and 
be deprived of the means of doing the work proposed on the 
east and north of the Lake ; but it would have been like cry- 
ing over spilt milk to do otherwise now than make the best 
use we could of our legs. The men were sent back to the 
ship for provisions, cloth, and beads; and while they are 
gone, we may say a little of the Cataracts which proved so 
fatal to our boating plan. 

They begin in 15° 20' S., and end in lat. 15° 55' S. ; the dif- 
ference of latitude is therefore 35'. The river runs in this 
space nearly north and south till we pass Malango ; so the 
entire distance is under 40 miles. The principal Cataracts are 
five in number, and are called Pamofunda or Pamozima, Mo- 
rewa, Panoreba or Tedzane, Pampatamanga, and Papekira. 
Besides these, three or four smaller ones might be mentioned, 
as, for instance, Mamvira, where in our ascent we first met the 
broken water, and heard that gushing sound, which, from the 
interminable windings of some 200 miles of river below, we 
had come to believe the tranquil Shire could never make. 
While these lesser cataracts descend at an angle of scarcely 
20°, the greater fall 100 feet in 100 yards, at an angle of about 
45°, and one at an angle of 70°. One part of Pamozima is 
perpendicular, and, when the river is in flood, causes a cloud 
of vapor to ascend, which, in our journey to Lake Shirwa, we 
saw at a distance of at least eight miles. The entire descent 



Chap. XXIII. GEOLOGY. 505 

from the Upper to the Lower Shire is 1200 feet. Only on one 
spot in all that distance is the current moderate, namely, above 
Tedzane. The rest is all rapid, and much of it being only 
fifty or eighty yards wide, and rushing like a mill-race, it 
gives the impression of water-power sufficient to drive all the 
mills in Manchester running to waste. Pamofunda or Pamo- 
zima has a deep shady grove on its right bank. When we 
were walking alone through its dark shade, we were startled 
by a shocking smell like that of a dissecting-room ; and on 
looking up, saw dead bodies in mats suspended from the 
branches of the trees, a mode of burial somewhat similar to 
that which we subsequently saw practiced by the Parsees in 
their "towers of silence" at Poonah, near Bombay. The 
name Pamozima means " the departed spirits or gods" — a fit 
name for a place over which, according to the popular belief, 
the disembodied souls continually hover. 

The rock lowest down in the series is dark reddish-gray 
syenite. This seems to have been an upheaving agent, for the 
mica schists above it are much, disturbed. Dark trappean 
rocks full of hornblende have in many places burst through 
these schists, and appear in nodules on the surface. The 
highest rock seen is a fine sandstone of closer grain than that 
at Tette, and quite metamorphosed where it comes into con- 
tact with the igneous rocks below it. It sometimes gives 
place to quartz and reddish clay schists, much baked by heat. 
This is the usual geological condition on the right bank of 
the Cataracts. On the other side we pass over masses of 
porphyritic trap, in contact with the same mica schists, and 
these probably give to the soil the great fertility we observed. 
The great body of the mountains is syenite. So much mica 
is washed into the river, that, on looking attentively on the 
stream, one sees myriads of particles floating and glancing in 
the sun, and this, too, even at low water. 



506 TRAVELING BEVERAGE. Chap. XXIV. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

Traveling Beverage. — Good Behavior of the English Sailors. — Motola Island. 
— Starvation Fare of Natives. — New Course of March. — The Rivi-rivi. — A 
Country after the scourge of War has passed over it. — Lose our Way. — Hos- 
pitality of the People. — Kirk's Range. — Valley of Goa or Gova. — Disintegra- 
tion of Rocks in a hot Climate. — Our Party viewed as Slave-traders. — Ma- 
tunda. — Reach the Heel of Lake Nyassa. — Katosa's Village. — Ajawa Mi- 
grations. — Native Agriculture. — Bishop Mackenzie's Idea of native Agri- 
culture. — Cotton. — Chinsamba. — The Assyrian Countenance the true Negro 
Type. — The Babisa. — Laugh of native Women. — Cry of Children. — Course 
N.E. to the Shores of Lake Molamba.— The Chia Fish-net.— Hoes.— Sav- 
ages could not have continued to Live had they been entirely Uninstructed. 
— They needed a superhuman Instructor. 

It was the 15th of August before the men returned from 
the ship, accompanied by Mr. Eae and the steward of the Pi- 
oneer. They brought two oxen, one of which was instantly 
slaughtered to put courage into all hearts, and some bottles 
of wine, a present from Waller and Alington. We never 
carried wine before, but this was precious as an expression 
of kind-heartedness on the part of the donors. If one at- 
tempted to carry either wine or spirits as a beverage, he 
would require a whole troop of followers for nothing else. 
Our greatest luxury in traveling was tea or coffee. We never 
once carried sugar enough to last a journey ; but coffee is al- 
ways good, while the sugarless tea is only bearable, because 
of the unbearable gnawing feeling of want and sinking which 
ensues if we begin to travel in the mornings without some- 
thing warm in the stomach. Our drink generally was water, 
and, if cool, nothing can equal it in a hot climate. We usu- 
ally carried a bottle of brandy rolled up in our blankets, but 
that was used only as a medicine ; a spoonful in hot water 



Chap. XXIV. OUR ENGLISH SAILORS. 507 

before going to bed, to fend off a chill and fever. Spirits al- 
ways do harm if the fever has fairly begun ; and it is prob- 
able that brandy and water has to answer for a good many 
of the deaths in Africa, 

Mr. Eae had made gratifying progress in screwing together 
the Lady Nyassa. He had the zealous co-operation of three 
as fine, steady workmen as ever handled too]s ; and, as they 
were noble specimens of English sailors, we would fain men- 
tion the names of men who are an honor to the British navy 
— John Eeid, John Pennell, and Eichard Wilson. The read- 
er will excuse our doing so, but we desire to record how much 
they were esteemed, and how thankful we felt for their good 
behavior. The weather was delightfully cool ; and, with full 
confidence in those left behind, it was with light hearts we 
turned our faces north. Mr. Eae accompanied us a day in 
front ; and, as all our party had earnestly advised that at least 
two Europeans should be associated together on the journey, 
the steward was at the last moment taken. Mr. Eae returned 
to get the Lady STyassa ready for sea ; and, as she drew less 
water than the Pioneer, take her down to the ocean in Oc- 
tober. One reason for taking the steward is worth record- 
ing. Both he and a man named King,* who, though only a 
leading stoker in the Navy, had been a promising student 
in the University of Aberdeen, had got into that weak, blood- 
less-looking state which residence in the lowlands without 
much to do or think about often induces. The best thing for 
this is change and an active life. A couple of days' march 
only as far as the Mukuru-Madse infused so much vigor into 
King that he was able to walk briskly back. Consideration 
for the steward's health led to his being selected for this 

* A brother, we believe, of one who accompanied Burke and Willis in the 
famous but unfortunate Australian Expedition. 



508 STARVATION FARE OF NATIVES. Chap. XXIV. 

northern journey, and the measure was so completely suc- 
cessful that it was often, in the hard march, a subject of re- 
gret that King had not been taken too. A removal of only 
a hundred yards is sometimes so beneficial that it ought, in 
severe cases, never to be omitted. 

We were fairly on the march on the 19th of August, The 
island Motola, at which the boat had been hung, was soon 
reached. Two men, who had taken refuge on the island, 
were walking along one of the paths which wound among the 
trees and bushes. The noise of the cataract, on the other side 
of their island home, prevented them from hearing the sound 
of our footsteps till we were within a }^ard of them. A star.t 
— and the bundles of roots they were carrying fell to the 
ground, and they made off as if to jump into the river; but 
we stopped beside the roots, and called them to come back 
and take their food. They thought that we were Ajawa,*but 
a glance assured them to the contrary, and we were gratified 
to see, in their look of confidence when told who we were, 
the wide -spread influence of the English name. The roots 
were about the size of common turnips, and called Malapa. 
The natives said that a person who did not know how to cook 
them would kill himself by using them as food. This is prob- 
able ; for it is necessary to boil them in a strong ley of wood- 
ashes, pour that away, and boil them in the same kind of 
mixture a second and third time before they are eatable. 
The tamarinds of this country were now ripe, and the people 
were collecting them and neutralizing their excessive acidity 
by boiling the pods with the ashes of the lignum-vitse-tree, 
which are beautifully white, and sometimes cake as if they 
contained a large amount of alkali ; the same ashes are used 
too as a whitewash. When we came upon men like these 
poor fugitives, they were employed to carry our luggage, and 



Chap. XXIV. NEW COURSE OF MARCH. 509 

were paid for their labor. This seemed to inspire more con- 
fidence than giving a present would have done. 

Oar object now was to get away to the N.N.W., proceed 
parallel with Lake Nyassa, but at a considerable distance west 
of it, and thus pass by the Mazitu or Zulus, near its northern 
end, without contact — ascertain whether any large river flow- 
ed into the Lake from the west — visit Lake Moelo, if time 
permitted, and collect information about the trade on the great 
slave route, which crosses the Lake at its southern end, and 
at Tsenga and Kota-kota. The Makololo were eager to trav- 
el fast, because they wanted to be back in time to hoe their 
fields before the rains, and also because their wives needed 
looking after. Indeed, Masiko had already been obliged to 
go back and settle some difference, of which a report was 
brought by other wives who followed their husbands about 
twenty miles with goodly supplies of beer and meal. Masiko 
went off in a fury ; nothing less than burning the offenders' 
houses would satisfy him ; but a joke about the inevitable 
fate of polygamists, and our inability to manage more than 
one wife, and sometimes not even her, with a walk of a good 
many miles in the hot sun, mollified him so much that, a 
week afterward, he followed and caught us up, without hav- 
ing used any weapon more dangerous than his tongue. 

In going in the first instance 1ST.E. from the uppermost cat- 
aract, we followed in a measure the great bend of the river 
toward the foot of Mount Zomba. Here we had a view of its 
most imposing side, the west, with the plateau some 8000 feet 
high, stretching away to its south, and Mounts Chiraclzuru 
and Mochiru towering aloft to the sky. From that goodly 
highland station, it was once hoped by the noble Mackenzie, 
who, for largeness of heart and loving disposition, really de- 
served to be called the " Bishop of Central Africa," that light 



510 WE PASS MANY SKELETONS. Chap. XXIV. 

and liberty would spread to all the interior. We still think 
it may be a centre for civilizing influences ; for any one de- 
scending from these cool heights, and stepping into a boat on 
the Upper Shire, can sail three hundred miles without a check 
into the heart of Africa. 

We passed through a tract of country covered with mo- 
pane-trees, where the hard-baked soil refused to let the usual 
thick crops of grass grow ; and here we came upon very 
many tracks of buffaloes, elephants, antelopes, and the spoor 
of one lion. An ox we drove along with us, as provision for 
the way, was sorely bitten by the tsetse. The effect of the 
bite was, as usual, quite apparent two days afterward, in the 
general flaccidity of the muscles, the drooping ears, and looks 
of illness. It always excited our wonder that we, who were 
frequently much bitten too by the same insects, felt no harm 
from their attacks. Man shares the immunity of the wild an- 
imals. 

Though this was the dry, or rather hot season, many flow- 
ers were in blossom along our path. The euphorbia, bao- 
bab, and caparidaceous trees were in full bloom. A number 
of large hornbills attracted our attention, and Masiko, ap- 
proaching the root of a tree in order to take sure aim at the 
birds, did not observe that within a few yards of the same 
tree two elephants stood in the cool shade fanning themselves 
with their huge ears. Dr. Livingstone fired a ball into the 
ear of one of the animals at thirty yards distance, but he only 
went off shaking his head, and Masiko for the first time per- 
ceived his danger as the beast began to tear away through 
the bush. Many Manganja skeletons were passed on enter- 
ing a grove of lofty trees, under whose deep shade stood the 
ruins of a large village. Wild animals had now taken pos- 
session of what had lately been the abodes of men living in 
peace and plenty. 



Chap. XXIV. , THE KIVI-RIVI. 5H 

Finding a few people on the evening of the 20th of Au- 
gust, who were supporting a wretched existence on tamarinds 
and mice, we ascertained that there was no hope of our being- 
able to buy food any where nearer than the Lakelet Pama- 
lombe, where the Ajawa chief Kainka was now living; but 
that plenty could be found with the Maravi female chief, Ny- 
ango. We turned away northwestward, and struck the stream 
Eibve-ribve, or Kivi-rivi, which rises in the Maravi range, and 
flows into the Shire. Here, except below its sandy bed, the 
channel was without any water, but higher up it has pools at 
intervals, with dry spaces between, and still farther west it be- 
comes a fast-flowing stream, forty feet wide, and one or two 
feet deep. Its name implies that it has cataracts in it, and 
the sanjika ascends it to spawn ; but the evaporation is so 
great in the hot season that before it reaches the Shire it is 
quite dry. 

The country here has been divided into districts ; that on 
the south of the Kivi-rivi is called Nkwesi, and that on the 
north, Banda ; and these extend along the boundary stream 
from its source to its confluence. This is interesting, as indi- 
cating an appreciation of the value of land. In many parts 
the idea has not taken root, and any one may make a garden 
wherever he pleases. The garden becomes property, the un- 
cultivated land no one claims. The villages, of the number 
of which we never previously had the smallest idea, from our 
route having been along the river, seem always to have been 
selected with a view to shade — they were now all deserted. 
The lofty sterculias, with trunks of fifty feet without a branch, 
of a yellowish - green, stand around, and many of the huts 
have been overshadowed by wide-spreading wild fig-trees, on 
which the elephants now feed undisturbed. The ground was 
strewn with branches which they had broken off. One spe- 



512 DESERTED VILLAGE. Chap. XXIV. 

cies of sterculia has roundish, pods the size of one's fist, with 
seeds covered with canary-colored pulp which yields abund- 
ance of fine oil. The motsikiri-trees have also been preserved 
for the sake of the fat and oil which may be obtained from 
their seeds. 

As the Eivi-rivi came from the N.W., we continued to 
travel along its banks until we came to- people who had suc- 
cessfully defended themselves against the hordes of the Aja- 
wa. By employing the men of one village to go forward and 
explain who we were to the next, we managed to prevent the 
frightened inhabitants from considering us a fresh party of 
Ajawa, or of Portuguese slaving agents. Here they had cul- 
tivated maize, and were willing to sell, but no persuasion 
could induce them to give us guides to the chieftainess Nyan- 
go. They evidently felt that we were not to be trusted; 
though, as we had to certify to our own character, our com- 
panions did not fail " to blow our own trumpet," with blasts 
in which modesty was quite out of the question. To allay 
suspicion, we had at last to refrain from mentioning the lady's 
name. 

It would be wearisome to repeat the names of the villages 
we passed on our way to the northwest. One was the largest 
we ever saw in Africa, and quite deserted, with the usual sad 
sight of many skeletons lying about. Another was called 
Tette. We know three places of this name, which fact shows 
it to be a native word ; it seems to mean a place where the 
water rushes over rocks. A third village was called Chipan- 
ga (a great work), a name identical with the Shupanga of the 
Portuguese. This repetition of names may indicate that the 
same people first took these epithets in their traditional pas- 
sage from north to south. The country generally was cover- 
ed with open forest of moderate growth, and very large trees 



Chap. XXIV. WE LOSE OUR WAY. 513 

fringed the water-courses. One, a fig-tree with a peculiar leaf, 
had been struck by lightning. On the lines which the elec- 
tric fluid had made in streaming down its trunk, masses of 
new growth were shooting out to repair the damage, and a 
great deal of gum, of a kind never observed before by us on 
any tree, had exuded. Beyond the village of Tette, the 
scourge of slave war had not passed westward ; and now, 
when we came to human dwellings, the people welcomed us 
in words, the full meaning of which we, whose happy coun- 
try has never suffered from an invasion, can scarcely realize, 
" We are glad that it is not war you bring, but peace." 

At this season of the year the nights are still cold, and the 
people, having no crops to occupy their attention, do not stir 
out till long after the sun is up. At other times they are off 
to their fields before the day dawns, and the first sound one 
hears is the loud talking of men and women, in which they 
usually indulge in the dark, to scare off beasts by the sound 
of the human voice. When no work is to be done, the first 
warning of approaching day is the hemp-smoker's loud ring- 
ing cough. 

Having been delayed one morning by. some negotiation 
about guides, who were used chiefly to introduce us to other 
villages, we two whites walked a little way ahead, taking the 
direction of the stream. The men having been always able 
to find out our route by the prints of our shoes, we went on 
for a number of miles. This time, however, they lost our track 
and failed to follow us. The path was well marked by ele- 
phants, hyenas, pallahs, and zebras, but for many a day no hu- 
man foot had trod it. When the sun went down a deserted 
hamlet was reached, where we made comfortable beds for our- 
selves of grass. Firing muskets to attract the attention of 
those' who have strayed is the usual resource in these cases. 

Kk 



514 HOSPITALITY OF THE PEOPLE. Chap. XXIV. 

On this occasion the sound of fire-arms tended to mislead us ; 
for, hearing shots next morning, a long, weary march led us 
only to some native hunters, who had been shooting buffaloes. 
Keturning to a small village, we met with some people who 
remembered our passing up to the Lake in the boat ; they 
were as kind as they could be. The only food they possess- 
ed was tamarinds prepared with ashes and a little cowitch 
meal. The cowitch, as mentioned before, has a velvety brown 
covering of minute prickles, which, if touched, enter the pores 
of the skin and cause a painful tingling. The women, in 
times of scarcity, collect the pods, kindle a fire of grass over 
them to destroy the prickles, then steep the beans till they be- 
gin to sprout, wash them in pure water, and either boil them 
or pound them into meal, which resembles our bean-meal. 
This plant climbs up the long grass, and abounds in all reedy 
parts, and, though a plague to the traveler who touches its 
pods, it performs good service in times of famine by saving 
many a life from starvation. Its name here is Kitedzi. 

Having traveled at least twenty miles in search of our party 
that day, our rest on a mat in the best hut of the village was 
very sweet. We had dined the evening before on a pigeon 
each, and had eaten only a handful of kitedzi porridge this 
afternoon. The good wife of the village took a little corn 
which she had kept for seed, ground it after dark, and made 
it into porridge ; this, and a cup of wild vegetables of a sweet- 
ish taste for a relish, a little boy brought in and put down, 
with several vigorous claps of his hands, in the manner which 
is esteemed polite, and which is strictly enjoined on all chil- 
dren. The repast was so scanty that even the smaller of the 
two starvelings, who was awake, thought that it was all for 
him, and set to work at once, while his fellow-sufferer, over- 
come with sleep, had just commenced a pleasant dream of be- 



Chap. XXIV. LEAVE CHASUNDU. 515 

ing at a grand feast. Awaking just in time to save a mere 
fragment of the tiny meal, he was amused to hear the ex- 
cuses offered by the ruthless devourer, which, from feeling the 
same cravings of appetite*, his companion perfectly understood. 

On the third day of separation, Akosanjere, the head man 
of this village, conducted us forward to our party, who had 
gone on to ISTseze, a district to the westward. This incident 
is mentioned, not for any interest it possesses apart from the 
idea of the people it conveys. We were completely sep- 
arated from our men for nearly three days, and had nothing 
wherewith to purchase food. The people were sorely pressed 
by famine and war, and their hospitality, poor as it was, did 
them great credit, and was most grateful to us. Our own 
men had become confused and wandered, but had done their 
utmost to find us; on our rejoining them the ox was slain, 
and all, having been on short commons, rejoiced in this " day 
of slaughter." Akosanjere was, of course, rewarded to his 
heart's content. 

On the 26th of August we left the village of Chasundu, 
where the party had reunited, and crossed several running 
streams of fine cold water. We had now attained a consider- 
able altitude, as was evident from the change in the vegeta- 
tion ; the masuko-tree, with its large hard leaves, never met 
with in the lowlands, was here covered with unripe fruit — 
fine rhododendrons — the trees (Ccesalpinece), with pinnated 
leaves, from which bark cloth is made — the molompi (Ptero- 
carpus), which, when wounded, exudes large quantities of a 
red juice so astringent that it might answer the purposes of 
kino, and furnishes a wood as elastic and light as ash, from 
which the native paddles are made. These trees, with ever- 
lasting flowers shaped like daisies, and ferns, betokened an 
• elevated habitat, and the boiling-point of water showed that 
our altitude was 2500 feet above the sea. 



516 KIRK'S RANGE. Chap. XXIV. 

As we pursued our way, we came close up to a range of 
mountains, the most prominent peak of which is called Mvai. 
This is a great/bare, rounded block of granite shooting up 
from the rest of the chain, It and several other masses of 
rock are of a light gray color, with white patches, as if of 
lichens ; the sides and summits are generally thinly covered 
with rather scraggy trees. There are several other prom- 
inent peaks — one, for instance, still farther north, called Chi- 
robve. Each has a i name, but we could never ascertain that 
there was an appellation which applied to the whole. This 
fact, and our wish to commemorate the name of Dr. Kirk, 
induced us afterward, when we could not discover a par- 
ticular peak mentioned to us formerly as Molomo-ao-koku, 
or Cock's-bill, to call the whole chain, from the west of the 
Cataracts up to the north end of the Lake, "Kirk's Eange." 
The part we slept at opposite Mvai was named Paudio, and 
was evidently a continuation of the district of one of our sta- 
tions on the Shire, at which observations for latitude were 
formerly taken. 

Leaving Paudio, we had Kirk's Eange close on our left and 
at least 3000 feet above us, and probably not less than 5000 
feet above the sea. Far to our right extended a long green 
wooded country rising gradually up to a ridge, ornamented 
with several detached mountains, which bounded the Shire 
Valley. In front, northward, lay a valley as rich and lovely 
as we ever saw any where, terminating at the mountains, 
which stretched away some thirty miles beyond our range 
of vision and ended at Cape Maclear. The groups of trees 
had never been subjected to the landscape gardener's art, but 
had been cut down mercilessly, just as suited the conven- 
ience of the cultivator, yet the various combinations of open 
forest, sloping woodland, grassy lawns, and massive clumps 



Chap. XXIV. VALLEY OF GOVA. 517 

of dark green foliage along the running streams formed as 
beautiful a landscape as could be seen on the Thames. This 
valley is named Goa or Gova, and as we moved through it 
we found that what was smooth to the eye was very much 
furrowed by running streams winding round innumerable 
knolls. These little brooklets came down from the range on 
our left, and the water was deliciously cool. 

Gova had been invaded by the Ajawa under Kainka, now 
living at the Lakelet Pamalombe, and a party of Babisa, both 
eager slave-traders. The consequence of this visitation was, 
that, in the spots where women had ventured back to their 
former gardens, our appearance was the signal for instant 
flight. A very large portion of the land had once been un- 
der cultivation, but it was now abandoned to buffaloes and 
elephants. The deep dark euphorbia hedges stood round 
the hamlets, and shady trees cast a grateful coolness over the 
smooth Boalo, where basket-making, spinning, and weaving, 
or dancing, drinking, and gossip formerly went on. Every 
thing was beautiful to the eye ; but no people could be seen, 
except here and there a few dejected-looking men. No food 
could be bought, and but a miserably small present of wild 
fruits was brought as the accustomed offering to strangers. 
We therefore tried to induce some of the villagers we fell in 
with to take us over the range on our left ; but, though we 
knew that the Maravi lived on its western side, they stoutly 
maintained that there were none within two days of it. Sev- 
eral of the mountain - sides in this country are remarkably 
steep, and the loose blocks on them sharp and angular, with- 
out a trace of weathering. For a time we considered the an- 
gularity of the loose fragments as evidence that the conti- 
nent was of comparatively recent formation, but we afterward 
heard the operation actually going on by which the boulders 



518 ROCKS AFFECTED BY HEAT. Chap. XXIV. 

are split into these sharp fragments. The rocks are heated 
by the torrid sun during the day to such an extent that one 
is sometimes startled on sitting down on them after dusk to 
find them quite too hot for the flesh, protected by only thin 
trowsers, to bear. The thermometer placed on them rises to 
137° in the sun. These heated surfaces, cooling from with- 
out by the evening air, contract more externally than within, 
and the unyielding interior forces off the outer parts to a dis- 
tance of one or two feet. Let any one in a rocky place ob- 
serve the fragments that have been thus shot off, and he will 
find in the vicinity pieces from a few ounces to one or two 
hundred pounds in weight, which exactly fit the new surface 
of the original block ; and he may hear in the evenings among 
the hills, where sound travels readily, the ringing echo of the 
report, which the natives ascribe to Mchesi, or evil spirits, 
and the more enlightened to these natural causes. 

It would have been no great feat to have scaled these 
mountains without any path to guide us, but we could not 
afford to waste the time necessary for a prolonged ascent. 
Our provisions were nearly expended, so we pushed onward 
to the north, in hopes of finding what we needed there. 

We afterward discovered that the poor people had good 
reason for not leading strangers, of whom they knew noth- 
ing, to the stores of corn which, after the invasion, they had 
been fain to hide among the crags of the hills. 

When we came abreast of the peak Chirobve, the people 
would no longer give us guides. They were afraid of their 
enemies, whose dwellings we now had on our east ; and, pro- 
ceeding without any one to lead us, or to introduce us to the 
inhabitants, we were perplexed by all the paths running zig- 
zag across instead of along the valley. They had been made 
by the villagers going from the hamlets on the slopes to their 



Chap. XXIV. WE ARE VIEWED AS SLAVE-HUNTERS. 519 

gardens in the meadows below. To add to our difficulties, 
the rivulets and mountain torrents had worn gullies some 
thirty or forty feet deep, with steep sides that could not be 
climbed except at certain points. The remaining inhabitants 
on the flank of the range, when they saw strangers winding 
from side to side, and often attempting to cross these tor- 
rent-beds at impossible places, screamed out their shrill war- 
alarm, and made the valley ring with their wild outcries. It 
was war, and war alone, and we were too deep down in the 
valley to make our voices heard in explanation. Fortunate- 
ly, they had burned off the long grass to a great extent. It 
only here and there hid them from us. Selecting an open 
spot, we spent a night regarded by all around us as slave- 
hunters, but were undisturbed, though the usual way of treat- 
ing an enemy in this part of the country is by night attack. 

The nights at the altitude of the valley were cool, the low- 
est temperature shown being 37° ; at 9 A.M. and 9 P.M. it 
was 58°, about the average temperature of the day ; at mid- 
day 82°, and sunset 70°. Our march was very much hinder- 
ed by the imperfectly burnt corn and grass stalks having fall- 
en across the paths. To a reader in England this will seem 
a very small obstacle. But he must fancy the grass-stems as 
thick as his little finger, and the corn-stalks like so many 
walking-sticks lying in one direction, and so supporting each 
other that one has to lift his feet up as when wading through 
deep high heather. The stems of grass showed the causes of 
certain explosions, as loud as pistols, which are heard when 
the annual fires come roaring over the land. The heated air 
inside, expanding, bursts the stalk with a loud report, and 
strews the fragments on the ground. 

A very great deal of native corn had been cultivated here, 
and- we saw buffaloes feeding in the deserted gardens, and 



520 HEEL OF LAKE NYASSA. Chap. XXIV. 

some women, who ran away very much faster than the beasts 
did. 

On the 29th, seeing some people standing under a tree by 
a village, we sat down, and sent Masego, one of our party, to 
communicate. The head man, Matunda, came back with him, 
bearing a calabash with water for us. He said that all the 
people had fled from the Ajawa, who had only just desisted 
from their career of pillage on being paid five persons as a 
fine for some offense for which they had commenced the in- 
vasion. Matunda had plenty of grain to sell, and all the wom- 
en were soon at work grinding it into meal. "We secured an 
abundant supply, and four milk goats. The Manganja goat 
is of a very superior breed to the general African animal, be- 
ing short in the legs, and having a finely -shaped broad body. 
By promising the Makololo that, when we no longer needed 
the milk, they should have the goats to improve the breed of 
their own at home, they were induced to take the greatest 
possible care of both goats and kids in driving and pasturing. 

After leaving Matunda, we came to the end of the high- 
land valley, and, before descending a steep declivity of a 
thousand feet toward the part which may be called the heel 
of the Lake, we had the bold mountains of Cape Maclear on 
our right, with the blue water at their base, the hills of Tsen- 
ga in the distance in front, and Kirk's 'Eange on cur left, 
stretching away northward, and apparently becoming lower. 
As we came down into a fine, rich undulating valley, many 
perennial streams running to the east from the hills on our 
left were crossed, while all those behind us on the higher 
ground seemed to unite in one named Lekue, which flowed 
into the Lake. 

After a long day's march in the valley of the Lake, where 
the temperature was very much higher than in that we had 



Chap. XXIV. KATOSA'S VILLAGE. 521 

just left, we entered the village of Katosa, which is situated 
on the bank of a stream among gigantic timber trees, and 
found there a large party of Ajawa — Waiau they called them- 
selves — all armed with muskets. We sat down among them, 
and were soon called to the chief's court, and presented with 
an ample mess of porridge, buffalo meat, and beer. Katosa 
was more frank than any Manganja chief we had met, and 
complimented us by saying that " we must be his ' Bazimo' 
(good spirits of his ancestors) ; for when he lived at Pama- 
lombe, we lighted upon him from above — men the like of 
whom he had never seen before, and coming he knew not 
whence." He gave us one of his own large and clean huts to 
sleep in ; and we may take this opportunity of saying that? 
the impression we received from our first journey on the hills 
among the villages of Chisunse, of the excessive dirtiness of 
the Manganja, was erroneous. This trait was confined to the 
cool highlands. Here crowds of men and women were ob- 
served to perform their ablutions daily in the stream that ran 
past their villages ; and this we have observed elsewhere to 
be a common custom with both Manganja and Ajawa. 

Before we started on the morning of the 1st of September, 
Katosa sent an enormous calabash of beer, containing at least 
three gallons, and then came and wished us to " stop a day 
and eat with him." On explaining to him the reasons for 
our haste, he said that he was in the way by which travelers 
usually passed; he never stopped them in their journeys, but 
would like to look at us for a day. On our promising to rest 
a little with him on our return, he gave us about two pecks 
of rice, and three guides to conduct us to a subordinate fe- 
male chief, Nkwinda, living on the borders of the Lake in 
front. 

The Ajawa, from having taken slaves down to Quillimane 



522 AJAWA MIGRATION. Chap. XXIV. 

and Mozambique, knew more of us than Katosa did. Their 
muskets were carefully polished, and never out of these slav- 
ers' hands for a moment, though in the chief's presence. We 
naturally felt apprehensive that we should never see Katosa 
again. A migratory afflatus seems to have come over the 
Ajawa tribes. Wars among themselves, for the supply of the 
Coast slave-trade, are said to have first set them in motion. 
The usual way in which they have advanced among the Man- 
ganja has been by slave-trading in a friendly way. Then, 
professing to wish to live as subjects, they have been wel- 
comed as guests, and the Manganja, being great agriculturists, 
have been able to support considerable bodies of these vis- 
itors for a time. When the provisions became scarce, the 
guests began to steal from the fields ; quarrels arose in conse- 
quence, and, the Ajawa having fire-arms, their hosts got the 
worst of it, and were expelled from village after village, and 
out of their own country. The Manganja were quite as bad 
in regard to slave-trading as the Ajawa, but had less enter- 
prise, and were much more fond of the home pursuits of 
spinning, weaving, smelting iron, and cultivating the soil, than 
of foreign travel. The Ajawa had little of a mechanical turn, 
and not much love for agriculture, but were very keen trad- 
ers and travelers. This party seemed to us to be in the first 
or friendly stage of intercourse with Katosa ; and, as we aft- 
erward found, he was fully alive to the danger. 

Our course was shaped toward the N.W., and we traversed 
a large fertile tract of rich soil extensively cultivated, but 
dotted with many gigantic thorny acacias which had proved 
too large for the little axes of the cultivators. After leaving 
Nkwinda, the first village we spent a night at in the district 
Ngabi was that of Chembi, and it had a stockade around it. 
The Azitu or Mazitu were said to be ravaging the country 



Chap. XXIV. NATIVE AGRICULTURE. 523 

to the west of us, and no one was safe except in a stockade. 
We have so often, in traveling, heard of war in front, that we 
paid little attention to the assertion of Chembi, that the whole 
country to the N.W. was in flight before these Mazitu, under 
a chief with the rather formidable name of Mowhiriwhiri ; we 
therefore resolved to go on to Chinsamba's, still farther in the 
same direction, and hear what he said about it. 

In marching across the same kind of fertile plains, there 
was little to interest the mind. The air was very sultry, for 
this is the " hot season" of the year. A thick haze restricted 
our view on all sides to a few miles. The blazing glare of 
the torrid sun on this haze gives to one, accustomed to mists 
elsewhere, the impression of being enveloped in a hot fog. 
The cultivation was very extensive, and naturally drew our 
thoughts to the agriculture of the Africans. On one part of 
this plain the people had fields of maize, the plants of which 
towered far over our heads. A succession of holes three feet 
deep and four wide had been made in a sandy dell, through 
which flowed a perennial stream. The maize sown in the 
bottom of these holes had the benefit of the moisture, which 
percolated from the stream through the sand ; and the result 
was a flourishing crop at a time of year when all the rest of 
the country was parched and dusty. On our counting the 
grains in one large cob or ear of maize, it was found to con- 
tain 360, and as one stalk has at times two or three cobs, it 
may be said to yield three or four hundred-fold. 

While advantage is taken of the moist stratum in these 
holes during the dry season, grain, beans, and pumpkins, 
which are cultivated only in the rainy time of the year, are 
planted on ridges a foot high, allowing the superabundant 
moisture to run off. Another way in which the natives show 
•their skill in agriculture is by collecting all the weeds and 



524 



FEMALES HOEING. 



Chap. XXIV. 



grass into heaps, covering them with soil, and then setting 
fire to them. They burn slowly, and all the ashes and much 
of the smoke is retained in the overlying soil. The mounds 
thus formed, when sown upon, yield abundantly. The only 
instrument of husbandry here is the short-handled hoe ; and 
about Tette the labor of tilling the soil, as represented in the 
wood -cut, is performed entirely by female slaves. On the 




Females Hoeing. 

"West Coast a double - handled hoe is employed. Here the 
small hoe is seen in the hands of both men and women. In 
other parts of Africa a hoe with a handle four feet long is 
used, but the plow is quite unknown. 

In illustration, of the manner in which the native knowl- 
edge of agriculture strikes an honest intelligent observer, it 
may be mentioned that the first time good Bishop Mackenzie 
beheld how well the fields of the Manganja were cultivated 



Chap. XXIV. CHINSAMBA'S STOCKADES. 525 

on the hills, he remarked to Dr. Livingstone, then his fellow- 
traveler, " When telling the people in England what were 
my objects in going out to Africa, I stated that, among other 
things, I meant to teach these people agriculture ; but I now 
see that they know far more about it than I do." This, we 
take it, was an honest, straightforward testimony, and we be- 
lieve that every unprejudiced witness, who has an oppor- 
tunity of forming an opinion of Africans who have never 
been debased by slavery, will rank them very much higher 
in the scale of intelligence, industry, and manhood, than oth- 
ers who know them only in a state of degradation. 

In two days' march we counted twenty -four cotton patches, 
each at least one fourth, of an acre in extent. One was 240 
paces broad. All, as before observed, had been kept so clear 
of weeds, that the fires passed by the cotton bushes in the 
regular grass-burnings without touching them. 

Men and women were seen carrying their grain from vil- 
lages toward the stockades; much corn strewed along the 
path evinced the haste with which it had been borne to the 
places of safety. Some were cutting down the large old eu- 
phorbia-trees, and an umbelliferous tree which surrounded 
the villages, in order that a clear view of the approach of the 
enemy might be obtained. Then one dead body lay in our 
path with a wound in the back ; then another, and another, 
lying in the postures assumed in mortal agony, which no 
painter can reproduce. On coming near Chinsamba's two 
stockades, on the banks of the Lintipe, we were told that the 
Mazitu had been repulsed there the day before, and we had 
evidence of the truth of the report of the attack in the sad 
sight of the bodies of the slain. The Zulus had taken off 
large numbers of women laden with corn, and, when driven 
back, had cut off the ears of a male prisoner, as a sort of 



526 THE NEGRO TYPE. Chap. XXIV. 

credential that he had been with the Mazitu, and with grim 
humor sent him to tell Chinsamba " to take good care of the 
corn in the stockades, for they meant to return for it in a 
month or two." 

Chinsamba's people were drumming with might and main 
on our arrival, to express their joy at their deliverance from 
the Mazitu. The drum is the chief instrument of music 
among the Manganja, and with it they express both their joy 
and grief. They excel in beating time. Chinsamba called 
us into a very large hut, and presented us with a huge basket 
of beer. The glare of sunlight from which we had come en- 
abled him, in diplomatic fashion, to have a good view of us 
before our eyes became enough accustomed to the dark inside 
to see him. He has a Jewish cast of countenance, or rather 
the ancient Assyrian face, as seen in the monuments brought 
to the British Museum by Mr. Layard. This form of face is 
very common in this country, and leads to the belief that the 
true type of the negro is not that met on the West Coast, from 
which most people have derived their ideas of the African. 
The majority of heads here are as well shaped as those depict- 
ed in the ancient Assyrian and Egyptian monuments. The 
lips are more like those of Europeans than of the West Coast 
negroes. They may be described as full, but not unpleasant- 
ly so ; and more heads may be observed prolonged a little 
backward and upward, like that of Julius Caesar, than among 
ourselves. A large ring in one ear reminds one of the Egyp- 
tian monuments, and so do some of the fashions of dressing 
the hair. The legs do not, as a rule, present the high calves, 
which are supposed to distinguish the African race ; nor do 
we meet what is termed the lark-heel any oftener here than 
among the civilized races of Europe. We have noticed a pe- 
culiar length of thigh-bone in several instances, but have not 



Chap. XXIV. THE BABISA. 527 

had an opportunity of ascertaining whether it is as common 
as the long arms, which formerly gave so much advantage in 
the use of the broadsword among ourselvesf 

Chinsamba had many Abisa or Babisa in his stockade, and 
it was chiefly by the help of their muskets that he had re- 
pulsed the Mazitu. These Babisa are great travelers and 
traders, and, in fact, occupy somewhat the same position in 
this country as the Greeks do in the Levant. About the first 
words they addressed to us were, " I have seen the sea ; I 
have been to Iboe, Mozambique, Quillimane ; I know ships, 
steamers, Englishmen ; I am a great trader." On this knowl- 
edge a claim was founded for familiarity, such as probably is 
permitted by half-caste traders on the coast. While the Man- 
ganja viewed us with awe, as totally unlike any people they 
had ever seen before, the Babisa entered our hut, and sat 
down with the air of men accustomed to good society. Wish- 
ing to be civil to the intruders, we complimented them on 
their extensive travels and trading, and expressed the hope 
that, as they had learned so much, and become so rich, they 
would be more than usually generous toward the weary, 
hungry, and thirsty strangers ; but this had no effect. We 
never here or elsewhere received the smallest present from 
the Babisa. The Makololo usually put the matter pretty 
forcibly by telling intrusive visitors of this tribe " that, from 
presuming- to sit near to Englishmen, it was plain that they 
had never seen one before — that their travels were lies from 
end to end — that they never could have met the real English 
of the sea, but only mongrel things with hair like this" (point- 
ing to their own heads). Without being rude, we usually 
obtained only just as much of their company as we required, 
and found that they had more knowledge of the interior than 
of the sea-board. 



528 LAUGH OF NATIVE WOMEN. Chap. XXIV. 

We liked Chinsamba very well, and found that lie was 
decidedly opposed to our risking our lives by going farther 
to the N.W. The Mazitu were believed to occupy all the 
hills in that direction, so we spent the 4th of 'September with 
him. His district, called Mosapo, is undulating, with some 
conical hills, but the haze only permitted us to see short dis- 
tances. The grass was now all yellow, and some black patch- 
es showed where it had been burned off. The tall trees were 
bare except on the banks of the Lintipe, which runs here in 
a deep rocky channel. Where we formerly crossed it, at the 
Lake, it was still and deep, and a hippopotamus played in 
one of its reaches. A thick grove stood at the stockade in 
which we lived, and our men shot many Guinea-fowls in it. 
The women and children were seen constantly bathing in the 
stream, and the men did not approach until they had asked 
leave to pass. We have frequently observed that the Man- 
ganja women are very particular in avoiding any spot where 
men are supposed to be washing, and it is only the chance of 
a first sight of the white skin that makes them at times for- 
get their good manners. The laugh of the women is brimful 
of mirth. It is no simpering smile, nor senseless loud guf- 
faw ; but a merry ringing laugh, the sound of which does 
one's heart good. One begins with Ha, Hee, then comes the 
chorus in which all join, Haeee! and they end by slapping 
their hands together, giving the spectator the idea of great 
heartiness. When first introduced to a chief, if we have ob- 
served a joyous twinkle of the eye accompanying his laugh, 
we have always set him down as a good fellow, and we have 
never been disappointed in him afterward. 

It is rather a minute thing to mention, and it will only be 
understood by those who have children of their own, but the 
cries of the little ones, in their infant sorrows, are the same 



Chap. XXIV. THE LAKE AT MOLAMBA. 529 

in tone, at different ages, here as all over the world. We 
have been perpetually reminded of home and family by the 
waitings which were once familiar to parental ears and heart, 
and felt thankful that to the sorrows of childhood our chil- 
dren would never have superadded the heart-rending woes 
of the slave-trade. 

Taking Chinsamba's advice to avoid the Mazitu in their 
marauding, we started on the 5th of September away to the 
N.E., and passed mile after mile of native corn-fields, with an 
occasional cotton-patch. Many of the thick corn-stalks had 
been broken in the haste of the reapers, and lay across the 
paths, much to our inconvenience in walking. Men and wom- 
en were eagerly reaping the remaining ears, and in haste con- 
veying them to the stockades, which were crammed with 
corn, and contained each three or four thousand souls ; some 
took us for Mazitu, and fled in dismay, but returned when 
assured by our guides that we were the English who had 
sailed up the Lake. So much corn had been scattered along 
the paths by the Mazitu and the fugitives in their haste, that 
some women were collecting and winnowing it from the sand. 
Three dead bodies and several burned villages showed that 
we were close upon the heels of the invaders, and that the 
system of securing " kind masters" in the Zulu's hands is a 
sad system enough. All that can be alleged in its favor is 
that it entails much less loss of life than that which secures 
" kind masters" across the ocean for far fewer survivors. 

After a long march through corn-fields, we passed over a 
waterless plain about MW. of the hills of Tsenga to a 
village on the Lake, and thence up its shores to Chitanda. 
The banks of the Lake were now crowded with fugitives, who 
had collected there for the poor protection which the reeds 
afforded. For miles along the water's edge was one contin- 

Ll 



530 THE LAKELET CHIA. Chap. XXIV. 

uous village of temporary huts. The people had brought a 
little corn with them; but they said, "What shall we eat 
when that is done? When we plant corn, the wild beasts 
(Zinyama, as they call the Mazitu) come and take it. When 
we plant cassava, they do the same. How are we to live?" 
A poor blind woman, thinking we were Mazitu, rushed off in 
front of us with outspread arms, lifting the feet high, in the 
manner peculiar to those who have lost their sight, and jump- 
ed into the reeds of a stream for safety. 

In our way along the shores we crossed several running 
rivulets of clear cold water, which, from having reeds at their 
confluences, had not been noticed in our previous exploration 
in the boat. One of these was called Mokola, and another 
had a strong odor . of sulphureted hydrogen. We reached 
Molamba on the 8th of September, and found our old ac- 
quaintance, Nkomo, there still. One of the advantages of 
traveling along the shores of the Lake was that we could 
bathe any where in its clear fresh water. To us, who had 
been obliged so oftsn to restrain our inclination in the Zam- 
besi and Shire for fear of crocodiles, this was pleasant beyond 
measure. The water now was of the same temperature as it 
was on our former visit, or 72° Fahr. The immense depth 
of the Lake prevents the rays of the sun from raising the 
temperature as high as that of the Shire and Zambesi ; and 
the crocodiles, having always clear water in the Lake, and 
abundance of fish, rarely attack man ; many of these reptiles 
could be seen basking on the rocks. 

A day's march beyond Molamba brought us to the Lakelet 
Chia, which lies parallel with the Lake. It is three or four 
miles long, by from one to one and a half broad, and com- 
municates with the Lake by an arm of good depth, but with 
some rocks in it. As we passed up between the Lake and 



Chap. XXIV. 



TRADE IN DEIED FISH. 



531 




Cilia Hand-net. 



the eastern shore of this Lakelet, we did not see any streams 
flowino- into it. It is quite remarkable for the abundance of 
fish ; and we saw upward of fifty large canoes engaged in the 
fisherj^, which is carried on by means of hand-nets with side- 
frame poles about seven feet long. These nets are nearly 
identical with those now in use in Normandy, the differ- 
ence being that the 
African net has a 
piece of stick lash- 
ed across the han- 
dle-ends of the side 
poles to keep them 
steady, which is a 
great improvement. The fish must be very abundant to be 
scooped out of the water in such quantities as we saw, and by 
so many canoes. There is quite a trade here in dried fish. 

The country around is elevated, undulating, and very ex- 
tensively planted with cassava. The hoe in use has a handle 
of four feet in length, and the iron part is exactly of the 
same form as that in the country of the Bechuanas. The 
baskets here, which. are so closely woven together as to hold 
beer, are the same with those employed to hold milk in Kaffir- 
land, a thousand miles distant. 

Marching on foot is peculiarly conducive to meditation ; 
one is glad of any subject to occupy the mind, and relieve 
the monotony of the weary treadmill-like trudge-trudging. 
This Chia net brought to our mind that the smith's bellows 
made here of a goatskin bag, with sticks along the open ends, 
are the same as those in use in the Bechuana country far to 
the southwest. These, with the long-handled hoe, may only 
show that each successive horde from north to south took 
"inventions with it from the same original source. "Where 



532 



SAVAGES NOT WHOLLY UNTAUGHT. Chap. XXIV. 



that source may have been is probabl/ indicated by another 
pair of bellows which we have observed below the Yictoria 
Falls, being found in Central India and among the Gipsies 
of Europe. 

Men in remote times may have had more highly developed 
instincts, which enabled them to avoid or use poi- 
g sons ; but the late Archbishop Whately has proved 
g that wholly untaught savages never could invent 
5 any thing, or even subsist at all. Abundant cor- 
3 roboration of his arguments is met with in this 
•1 country, where the natives require but little in the 
■g way of clothing, and have remarkably hardy stom- 
j achs. Although possessing a knowledge of all the 
I edible roots and fruits in the country, having hoes 
I to dig with, and spears, bows, and arrows to kill 

o 

I the game, we have seen that, notwithstanding all 
| these appliances and means to boot, they have per- 
■ ished of absolute starvation. 

.2 

| Three kinds of wild grasses are met with, the 

t seeds of which may be used as food : one of them, 

1 called Noanje, has been cultivated, and when the 

§ grain is separated from the husks, and cooked, it 

I yields a tolerable meal; but without the art of 

| pounding these grains and separating the husks, 

f the stomachs of the lowest savages could not en- 

I dure the sharp scales which form at least a half of 

% the grain. The same form of pestle and mortar 

for clearing grain is met with from Egypt to the 

southern extremity of the continent ; the existence of this 

seems to show that the same want has been felt and provided 

for from the period of the earliest migrations of the Africans. 

Since we find that men who already possess a knowledge 



Chap. XXIV. INSTRUCTION FROM ABOVE. 533 

of the arts needed by even the lowest savages are swept off 
the earth when reduced to a dependence on wild roots and 
fruits alone, it is nearly certain that if they ever had been in 
what is called a state of nature, from being so much less fitted 
for supporting and taking care of themselves than the brutes, 
they could not have lived long enough to have attained even 
to the ordinary state of savages. They could not have sur- 
vived for a sufficient period to invent any thing, such as we 
who are not savages, and know how to make the egg stand 
on its end, think that toe easily could have invented. The 
existence, therefore, of the various instruments in use among 
the Africans, and other partially civilized people, indicates 
the communication of instruction at some period from some 
Being superior to man himself. 

The art of making fire is the same in India as in Africa. 
The smelting furnaces, for reducing iron and copper from the 
ores, are also similar. Yellow haematite, which bears not the 
smallest resemblance either in color or weight to the metal, is 
employed near Kolobeng for the production of iron. Mala- 
chite, the precious green stone used in civilized life for vases, 
would never be suspected by the uninstructed to be a rich 
ore of copper, and yet it is extensively smelted for rings and 
other ornaments in the heart of Africa. A copper bar of 
native manufacture four feet long was offered to us for sale 
at Chinsamba's. These arts are monuments attesting the fact 
that some instruction from above must at some time or other 
have been supplied to mankind ; and, as Archbishop Whate- 
ly says, " the most probable conclusion is, that man when first 
created, or very shortly afterward, was advanced, by the Cre- 
ator himself, to a state above that of a mere savage." 

The argument for an original revelation to man, though 
.quite independent of the Bible history, tends to confirm that 



534: CONFIKMATION OF BIBLE HISTORY. Chap. XXIV. 

history. It is of the same nature with this, that man could 
not have made himself, and therefore must have had a Divine 
Creator. Mankind could not, in the first instance, have civil- 
ized themselves, and therefore must have had a superhuman 
Instructor. 

In connection with this subject, it is remarkable that 
throughout successive generations no change has taken place 
in the form of the various inventions. Hammers, tongs, hoes, 
axes, adzes, handles to them ; needles, bows and arrows, with 
the mode of feathering the latter ; spears, for killing game, 
with spear-heads having what is termed " dish 1 ' on both sides 
to give them, when thrown, the rotatory motion of rifle-balls; 
the arts of spinning and weaving, with that of pounding and 
steeping the inner bark of a tree till it serves as clothing; 
millstones for grinding corn into meal ; the manufacture of 
the same kind of pots or chatties as in India ; the art of cook- 
ing, of brewing beer and straining it, as was done in ancient 
Egypt ; fish-hooks, fishing and hunting nets, fish-baskets, and 
weirs, the same as in the Highlands of Scotland ; traps for 
catching animals, etc., etc., have all been so very permanent 
from age to age, and some of them, of identical patterns, are 
so widely spread over the globe, as to render it probable 
that they were all, at least in some degree, derived from one 
Source. The African traditions, which seem possessed of the 
same unchangeability as the arts to which they relate, like 
those of all other nations, refer their origin to a superior Be- 
ing. And it is much more reasonable to receive the hints 
given in Genesis concerning direct instruction from God to 
our first parents or their children in religious or moral duty, 
and probably in the knowledge of the arts of life,* than to 

* Genesis, chap, iii., verses 21 arid 23, "make coats of skins, and clothed 
them" — "sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground," imply 



Chap. XXIV. LAKE NYASSA. 535 

give credence to the theory that untaught savage man sub- 
sisted in a state which would prove fatal to all his descend- 
ants, and that in such helpless state he made many inventions 
which most of his progeny retained, but never improved upon 
during some thirty centuries. 

We crossed in canoes the arm of the Lake which joins 
Chia to ISTyassa, and spent the night on its northern bank. 
The whole country adjacent to the Lake, from this point up 
to Kota-kota Bay, is densely peopled by thousands who have 
fled from the forays of the Mazitu in hopes of protection from 
the Arabs who live there. In three running rivulets we saw 
the Shuare palm, and an oil palm which is much inferior to 
that on the West Coast. Though somewhat similar in ap- 
pearance, the fruit is not much larger than hazel-nuts, and the 
people do not use them, on account of the small quantity of 
oil which they afford. 

The idea of using oil for light never seems to have entered 
the African mind. Here a bundle of split and dried bamboo, 
tied together with creeping plants, as thick as a man's body, 
and about twenty feet in length, is employed in the canoes as 
a torch to attract the fish at night. It would be considered a 
piece of the most wasteful extravagance to burn the oil they 
obtain from the castor-oil bean and other seeds, and also from 
certain fish, or, in fact, to do any thing with it but anoint 
their heads and bodies. 

teaching. Vide Archbishop Whately's " History of Religious Worship. " John 
W. Parker, West Strand. London, 1849. 



536 KOTA-KOTA BAY. Chap. XXV. 



CHAPTEE XXV. 

Kota-kota Bay. — Arabs building a Dhow. — Natives congregate to any Point 
which affords hope of Protection from War. — Does Mohammedanism spread 
in Africa ? — Pagan Africans superior in Morality to followers of the False 
Prophet. — Leave for the West. — Ascent of the Plateau. — Native Ceremony 
of Initiation. — Slave Route. — Effects of rarefied Air. — Primitive African 
Eeligion inculcates Humility. — Unlike Mohammedanism. — Cruel Rites limit- 
ed to the small district of Dahomey. — Witchcraft, or influence of Plants. — 
Absence of Idol Worship. — Humid Climate. — Loangwa of the Lake andLo- 
angwa of Maravi. — Matumboka. — Filing the Teeth and Tattooing. — Gun- 
powder the source of the Slave-trader's Power. — Slave-hunters' Mode of 
Attack. — Muazi in Kasungu. — Causes of Inundations. — Rams. — Climate 
dependent on prevailing Winds. — The Watershed. — Native Geography. — 
Comparison between Africa and India. — Fossils. — The Iron Age. — Minute 
Topography. — Native Language. 

We arrived at Kota-kota Bay in the afternoon of the 10th 
of September, 1863, and sat down under a magnificent wild 
fig-tree, with leaves ten inches long by five broad, about a 
quarter of a mile from the village of Juma ben Saidi and 
Yakobe ben Arame, whom we had met on the Eiver Kaombe, 
a little north of this, in our first exploration of the Lake. 
"We had rested but a short time, when Juma, who is evident- 
ly the chief person here, followed by about fifty people, came 
to salute us, and to invite us to take up our quarters in his 
village. The hut which, by mistake, was offered, was so 
small and dirty that we preferred sleeping in an open space 
a few hundred yards off. 

Juma afterward apologized for the mistake, and presented 
us with rice, meal, sugar-cane, and a piece of malachite. We 
returned his visit on the following day, and found him en- 
gaged in building a dhow or Arab vesse], to replace one 
which he said had been wrecked. This new one was fifty 



Chap. XXV. THE ARAB DHOW. 537 

feet long, twelve feet broad, and five feet deep. The planks 
were of a wood like teak, here called Timbati, and the timbers 
of a closer grained wood called Msoro. The sight of this dhow 
gave us a hint which, had we previously received it, would 
have prevented our attempting to carry a vessel of iron past 
the Cataracts. The trees around Katosa's village were Tim- 
bati, and they would have yielded planks fifty feet long and 
thirty inches broad. With a few native carpenters a good 
vessel could be built on the Lake nearly as quickly as one 
could be carried past the Cataracts, and at a vastly less cost. 
Juma said that no money would induce him to part with this 
dhow. He was very busy in transporting slaves across the 
Lake by means of two boats, which we saw returning from a 
trip in the afternoon. As he did not know of our intention 
to visit him, we came upon several gangs of stout young men 
slaves, each secured by the neck to one common chain, wait- 
ing for exportation, and several more in slave-sticks. These 
were all civilly removed before our interview was over, be- 
cause Juma knew that we did not relish the sight. 

When we met the same Arabs in 1861, they had but few 
attendants : according to their own account, they had now, 
in the village and adjacent country, 1500 souls. It is certain 
that tens of thousands had flocked to them for protection, 
and all their power and influence must be attributed to the 
possession of guns and gunpowder. This crowding of refu- 
gees to any point where there is a hope for security for life 
and property is very common in this region, and the knowl- 
edge of it made our hopes beat high for the success of a peace- 
ful Mission on the shores of the Lake. The rate, however, 
in which the people here will perish by the next famine, or 
be exported by Juma and others, will, we fear, depopulate 
those parts which we have just described as crowded with 



538 DECLINE OF MOHAMMEDANISM. Chap. XXV. 

people. Hunger will ere long compel them to sell each other. 
An intelligent man complained to us of the Arabs often seiz- 
ing slaves to whom they took a fancy without the formality 
of purchase ; but the price is so low — from two to four yards 
of calico — that one can scarcely think this seizure and expor- 
tation without payment worth their while. The boats were 
in constant employment, and, curiously enough, Ben Habib, 
whom we met at Linyanti in 1855, had been taken across the 
Lake the day before our arrival at this Bay, on his way from 
Sesheke to Kilwa, and we became acquainted with a native 
servant of the Arabs, called Selele Saidallah, who could speak 
the Makololo language pretty fairly from having once spent 
some months in the Barotse Yalley. 

From boyhood upward we have been accustomed, from 
time to time, to read in books of travels about the great ad- 
vances annually made by Mohammedanism in Africa. The 
rate at which this religion spreads was said to be so rapid, 
that in after days, in our own pretty extensive travels, we 
have constantly been on the look-out for the advancing wave 
from north to south, which, it was prophesied, would soon 
reduce the entire continent to the, faith of the False Prophet. 
The only foundation that we can discover for the assertions 
referred to, and for others of more recent date, is the fact that 
in a remote corner of Northwestern Africa, the Fulahs, and 
Mandingoes, and some others in Northern Africa, as men- 
tioned by Dr. Barth, have made conquests of territory ; but 
even they care so very little for the extension of their faith, 
that after conquest no pains whatever are taken to indoctrin- 
ate the adults of the tribe. This is in exact accordance with 
the impression we have received from our intercourse with 
Mohammedans and Christians. The followers of Christ alone 
are anxious to propagate their faith. A quasi philanthropist 



Chap. XXV. AFRICANS THE BETTER MEN. 539 

would certainly never need to recommend the followers of 
Islam, whom we have met, to restrain their benevolence by- 
preaching that " Charity should begin at home." 

Though Selele and his companions were bound to their 
masters by domestic ties, the only new idea they had imbibed 
from Mohammedanism was that it would be wrong to eat 
meat killed by other people. They thought it would be 
" unlucky," just as the inhabitants of Kolobeng, before being 
taught the requirements of Christianity, refrained from hoe- 
ing their gardens on Sundays, lest they should reap an un- 
lucky crop. So far as we could learn, no efforts had been 
made to convert the natives, though these two Arabs, and 
about a dozen half-castes, had been in the country for many 
years ; and, judging from our experience with a dozen Mo- 
hammedans in our employ at high wages for sixteen months, 
the Africans would be the better men in proportion as they 
retained their native faith. This may appear only a harsh 
judgment from a mind imbued with Christian prejudices; 
but without any pretension to that impartiality which leaves 
it doubtful to which side the affections lean, the truth may 
be fairly stated by one who viewed all Mohammedans and 
Africans with the sincerest good- will. 

Our twelve Mohammedans from Johanna were the least 
open of any of our party to impression from kindness. A 
marked difference in general conduct was apparent. The 
Makololo, and other natives of the country, whom we had 
with us, invariably shared with each other the food they had 
cooked, but the Johanna men partook of their meals at a dis- 
tance. This, at first, we attributed to their Moslem preju- 
dices ; but when they saw the cooking process of the others 
nearly complete, they came, sat beside them, and ate the por- 
tion offered without ever remembering to return the compli- 



540 MOHAMMEDAN AMBITION. Chap. XXV. 

ment when their own turn came to be generous. The Mako- 
lolo and the others grumbled at their greediness, yet always 
followed the common custom of Africans of sharing their 
food with all who sit around them. What vexed us most in 
the Johanna men was their indifference to the welfare of each 
other. Once, when they were all coming to the ship after 
sleeping ashore, one of them walked into the water with the 
intention of swimming off to the boat, and while yet hardly 
up to his knees was seized by a horrid crocodile and dragged 
under ; the poor fellow gave a shriek, and held up his hand 
for aid, but none of his countrymen stirred to his assistance, 
and he was never seen again. On asking his brother-in-law 
why he did not help him, he replied, " Well, no one told him 
to go into the wa^er. It was his own fault that he was 
killed." The Makololo, on the other hand, rescued a woman 
at Senna by entering the water, and taking her out of the 
crocodile's mouth. 

It is not assumed that their religion had much to do in 
the matter. Many Mohammedans might contrast favorably 
with indifferent Christians ; but, so far as our experience in 
East Africa goes, the moral tone of the follower of Moham- 
med is pitched at a lower key than that of the untutored Af- 
rican. The ancient zeal for propagating the tenets of the 
Koran has evaporated, and been replaced by the most intense 
selfishness and grossest sensuality. The only known efforts 
made by Mohammedans, namely, those in the northwest and 
north of the continent, are so linked with the acquisition of 
power and plunder as not to deserve the name of religious 
propagandism ; and the only religion that now makes prose- 
lytes is that of Jesus Christ. To those who are capable of 
taking a comprehensive view of this subject, nothing can be 
adduced of more telling significance than the well - attested 



Chap. XXV. LEAVE EOR THE WEST. 541 

fact that, while the Mohammedans, Fulahs, and others toward 
Central Africa, make a few proselytes by a process which 
gratifies their own covetousness, three small sections of the 
Christian converts, the Africans in the south, in the West In- 
dies, and on the West Coast of Africa actually contribute for 
the support and spread of their religion upward of £15,000 
annually.* That religion which so far overcomes the selfish- 
ness of the human heart must be Divine. 

Leaving Kota-kota Bay, we turned away due west on the 
great slave-route to Katanga's and Cazembe's country in Lon- 
da. Juma lent us his servant, Selele, to lead us the first day's 
march. He said that the traders from Kilwa and Iboe cross 
the Lake either at this bay, or at Tsenga, or at the southern 
end of the Lake, and that wherever they may cross they all 
go by this path to the interior. They have slaves with them 
to carry their goods, and when they reach a spot where they 
can easily buy others, they settle down and begin the traffic, 
and at once cultivate grain. So much of the land lies waste, 
that no objection is ever made to any one taking possession 
of as much as he needs. They can purchase a field of cassa- 
va for their present wants for very little, and they continue 
trading in the country for two or three years, and giving what 
weight their muskets possess to the chief who is most liberal 
to them. 

The first day's march led us over a rich, well - cultivated 
plain. This was succeeded by highlands, undulating, stony, 
and covered with scraggy trees. Many banks of well-round- 
ed shingle appear. The disintegration of the rocks, now go- 

* "In 1S54 the native church at Sierra Leone undertook to pay for their 
primary schools, and thereby effected a saving to the Church Missionary Soci- 
ety of £800 per annum. In 1861 the contributions of this one section of na- 
tive .Christians had amounted to upward of £10,000." — "Manual of Church 
Missionary Society's African Missions." 



542 THE RIVER BUA. Chap. XXV. 

ing on, does not round off the angles ; they are split rip by 
the heat and cold into angular fragments. On these high 
downs we crossed the Eiver Kaombe. Beyond it we came 
among the upland vegetation — rhododendrons, proteas, the 
masuko, and molompi. At the foot of the hill Kasuko-suko, 
we found the Eiver Bua running north to join the Kaombe. 
We had to go a mile out of our way for a ford ; the stream 
is deep enough at parts for hippopotami. The various streams 
not previously noticed, crossed in this journey, had before this 
led us to the conclusion, independently of the testimony of 
the natives, that no large river ran into the north end of the 
Lake. No such affluent was needed to account for the Shire's 
perennial flow. 

In looking forward, we seemed to be ascending the long 
slope of a range of mountains ; but the nearer view consisted 
of a succession of beautiful tree-covered rounded hills ; the 
narrow footpaths were perpetually leading up steep inclines 
and down descents to running rills, whose sides were fringed 
with fine large evergreen trees ,* the deciduous trees, having 
parted with their leaves, were now enjoying the rest of win- 
ter, though only twelve degrees from the equator. The peo- 
ple in the villages into which we entered were generally em- 
ployed in making very neat fish and other baskets of split 
bamboos, or in beating the bark of trees into cloth. The 
bark cloth, made to the north of this district, is from a spe- 
cies of fig-tree. The cassava is the chief food cultivated on 
the heights ; the castor-oil plant is extensively grown also, 
and oil is extracted from the seeds for the purpose of lubrica- 
ting the body, and more especially the hair, which is worn 
very long. From the careful way in which many train out 
their hair into different-shaped masses, it has less of wavy curl 
than the wool of a long-fleeced sheep ; the oil seems to keep 
it straight. 



Chap. XXV. CEKEMONY OF INITIATION. 543 

In one village we found all the women engaged in celebra- 
ting, with dancing and singing, a ceremony for two girls of 
twelve or fourteen, analogous to the bofiuera, which among 
the Bechuana and Makololo forms the young men into bands 
or regiments for life. The Bechuana call it boyale when the 
novices are girls, and here the ceremony is named moari, ev- 
idently a cognate word. These girls were dressed with a pro- 
fusion of beads, and painted over the head and face with pipe- 
clay, which gave them the appearance of wearing an ancient 
helmet with chin-straps. The women were so eager in the 
dance, and in teaching their young proteges to perform their 
part in it properly^ that they paid no attention to the entrea- 
ties of the men to go and grind meal, and clothe themselves 
with the cloth the strangers had brought. Whence these cus- 
toms, and from whom a number of laws which are recognized 
for thousands of miles have been derived, no one can divine. 
They seem to have made an indelible impression on the na- 
tive mind, and abide in it unchanged from age to age. The 
boguera has something of the Jewish ceremony of initiation, 
but it is a political, not a religious institution. It can not be 
traced to Arab origin, and is spoken of, by those who have 
undergone it, under the breath, and with a circumlocution 
which shows that they regard it in a very serious light. 

On September 15th we reached the top of the ascent, which, 
from its many ups and downs, had often made us puff and 
blow as if broken -winded. The water of the streams we 
crossed was deliciously cold, and, now that we had gained the 
summit at ISTdonda, where the boiling-point of water showed 
an altitude of 3440 feet above the sea, the air was delightful. 
Looking back, we had a magnificent view of the Lake, but 
the haze prevented our seeing beyond the sea horizon. The 
scene was beautiful, but it was impossible to dissociate the 



544 SLAVE-KOUTE. Chap. XXV. 

lovely landscape, whose hills and dales had so sorely tried 
our legs and lungs, from the sad fact that this was part of the 
great slave-route nbw actually in use. By this road many 
"Ten thousands", have here seen "the sea," "the sea," but 
with sinking hearts, for the universal idea among the captive 
gangs is that they are going to be fattened and eaten by the 
whites. They can not, of course, be so much shocked as we 
should be ; their sensibilities are far from fine, their feelings 
are more obtuse than ours — in fact, "the live eels are used 
to being skinned ;" perhaps they rather like it. "We who are 
not philosophic blessed the Providence which at Thermopylae 
in ancient days rolled back the tide of Eastern conquest from 
the West, and so guided the course of events that light, and 
liberty, and Grospel truth spread to our distant isle, and, eman- 
cipating our race, freed them from the fear of ever again hav- 
ing to climb fatiguing heights and descend wearisome hollows 
in a slave-gang, as we suppose they did when the fair English 
youths were exposed for sale at Eome. 

Looking westward we perceived that what from below had 
the appearance of mountains was only the edge of a table- 
land, which, though at first undulating, soon became smooth, 
and sloped toward the centre of the country. To the south 
a prominent mountain called Chipata, and to the southwest 
another named ISTgalla, by which the Bua is said to rise, gave 
character to the landscape. In the north, masses of hills pre- 
vented our seeing more than eight or ten miles. 

The air, which was so exhilarating to Europeans, had an 
opposite effect on five men who had been born and reared in 
the malaria of the Delta of the Zambesi. No sooner did they 
reach the edge of the plateau at Ndonda than they lay down 
prostrate, and complained of pains all over them. The tem- 
perature was not much lower than that on the shores of the 



Chap. XXV. EFFECTS OF EAREFIED AIR. 545 

Lake below, 76° being the mean temperature of the day, 52° 
the lowest, and 82° the highest during the twenty-four hours ; 
at the Lake it was about 10° higher. Of the symptoms they 
complained of — pains every where — nothing could be made. 
And yet it was evident that they had good reason for saying 
that they were ill. They scarified almost every part of their 
bodies as a remedial measure ; medicines, administered on 
the supposition that their malady was the effect of a sudden 
chill, had no effect, and in two days one of them actually died 
in consequence of, as far as we could judge, a change from a 
malarious to a purer and more rarefied atmosphere. 

As we were on the slave-route, we found the people more 
churlish than usual. On being expostulated with about it, 
they replied, " We have been made wary by those who come 
to buy slaves." The calamity of death having befallen our 
party, seemed, however, to awaken their sympathies. They 
pointed out their usual burying-place, lent us hoes, and helped 
to make the grave. When we offered to pay all expenses, 
they showed that they had not done these friendly offices 
without fully appreciating their value ; for they enumerated 
the use of the hut, the mat on which the deceased had lain, 
the hoes, the labor, and the medicine which they had scatter- 
ed over the place to make him rest in peace. 

The power ascribed to certain medicines, made from plants 
known only to the initiated, is the most prominent feature in 
* the religion of the Africans. According to their belief, there 
is not only a specific for every ill that flesh is heir to, but for 
every woe of the wounded spirit. The good spirits of the de- 
parted, Azimo or Bazimo, may be propitiated by medicines, 
or honored by offerings of beer or meal, or any thing they 
loved while in the body; and the bad spirits, "Mchesi" of 
w-hom we have heard only at Tette, and therefore can not be 

Mm 



546 PRIMITIVE AFRICAN FAITH. Chap. XXV. 

certain that they belong to the pure native faith, may be pre- 
vented by medicine from making raids and mischief in the 
gardens. A man with headache was heard to say, "My de- 
parted father is now scolding me ; I feel his power in my 
head;" and then was observed to remove from the company, 
make an offering of a little food on a leaf and pray, looking 
upward to where he supposed his father's spirit to be. They 
are not, like Mohammedans, ostentatious in their prayers. 
They speak of the spirit world with reverence, and court the 
shade and silence for their acts of worship. The Mohammed- 
an is right in making the great show he does, bowing down 
to the earth before all, and using the repetitions which belong 
to his creed, because his religion enjoins great show of piety, 
and fosters the idea of proud superiority in the self-compla- 
cent Pharisee over the whole human family ; while the Afri- 
can retires from view, somewhat like the Christian, who en- 
ters into his closet, and, when he has shut the door, prays to 
his Father who sees in secret. 

The primitive African faith seems to be that there is one 
Almighty Maker of heaven and earth ; that he has given the 
various plants of earth to man to be employed as mediators 
between him and the spirit world, where all who have ever 
been born and died continue to live ; that sin consists in of- 
fenses against their fellow-men, either here or among the de- 
parted, and that death is often a punishment of guilt, such as 
witchcraft. Their idea of moral evil differs in no respect 
from ours, but they consider themselves amenable only to in- 
ferior beings, not to the Supreme. Evil speaking — lying — 
hatred — disobedience to parents — neglect of them-^are said 
by the intelligent to have been all known to be sin, as well 
as theft, murder, or adultery, before they knew aught of Eu- 
ropeans or their teaching. The only new addition to their 



Chap. XXV. MILDNESS OF THEIR RELIGION. 547 

moral code is, that it is wrong to have more wives than one. 
This, until the arrival of Europeans, never entered into their 
minds even as a doubt. 

Every thing not to be accounted for by common causes, 
whether of good or evil, is ascribed to the Deity. Men are 
inseparably connected with the spirits of the departed, and 
when one dies he is believed to have joined the hosts of his 
ancestors. All the Africans we have met with are as firmly 
persuaded of their future existence as of their present life, 
and we have found none in whom the belief in the Supreme 
Being was not rooted. He is so invariably referred to as the 
author of every thing supernatural, that, unless one is igno- 
rant of their language, he can not fail to notice this promi- 
nent feature of their faith. When they pass into the unseen 
world they do not seem to be possessed with the fear of pun- 
ishment. The utensils placed upon the grave are all broken, 
as if to indicate that they will never be used by the departed 
again. The body is put into the grave in a sitting posture, 
and the hands are folded in front. In some parts of the coun- 
try there are tales which we could translate into faint glim- 
merings of a resurrection ; but whether these fables, handed 
down from age to age, convey that meaning to the natives 
themselves, we can not tell. The true tradition of faith is as- 
serted to be, " though a man die he will live again ;" the false, 
that when he dies he is dead forever. 

Though cheerless enough to a Christian, the African's reli- 
gion is mild in its character. In one very remote and small 
corner of the country, called Dahomey, it has degenerated into 
a bloody superstition. Human blood there takes the place 
of the propitiatory plants which are used over nine tenths of 
the continent. The reckless disregard of human life mention- 
ed by Speke and Grant is quite exceptional. We have heard 



548 ABSENCE OF IDOL- WORSHIP. Chap. XXV. 

from natives that a former possessor of Matiamvo's chieftain- 
ship was subject to fits of a similar blood-thirstiness, but he 
was clearly insane ; and the great reverence for royalty, with 
which the Africans are imbued, alone saved him, and proba- 
bly Speke's chief, Mtesi, also, from decapitation. In two or 
three other places, parts of the human body are also employ- 
ed to mediate between man and the spirit world; hut a cruel 
character can no more: be.' ascribed to the African religion,. as 
a whole, on such grounds' as these, than cannibalism can be 
imputed to the whole African family because human flesh is 
eaten in one or two places in Africa. 

The idea of witchcraft flows naturally from their religious 
belief. The evil-disposed may, by a knowledge of the bark 
and roots of plants, inflict disaster. A horn, or rude image, 
is sometimes made use of as a means of preserving the medi- 
cines of defense, and is worn as an amulet. These images, 
horns, or other articles, called greegrees, or jeujeus, are not 
held sacred for a moment after the medicine is found to have 
lost its power ; and mere idol- worship, which they seem to in- 
dicate, is as much ignored among the natives, as the worship 
of pictures and images is asserted to be in the churches of the 
more enlightened. A greegree, or fetish, is thrown away as 
useless as soon as the consecrating nostrum is discovered to be 
inoperative for the purpose for which it was procured. On 
this subject, Mr. Wilson, whom we have quoted before, gives 
much information, which, from observation elsewhere, we have 
found to be the fruit of accurate personal investigation. 

In our course westward we at first passed over a gently 
undulating country, with a reddish clayey soil, which, from 
the heavy crops, appeared to be very fertile. Many rivulets 
were crossed, some running southward into the Bua, and oth- 
ers northward into the Loangwa, a river which we formerly 



Chap. XXV. THE MATUMBOKA— TATTOOING. 549 

saw flowing into the Lake. Farther on, tta wa f t was chiefly 
found in pools and wells. Then still farther, in the same di- 
rection, some water-courses were said to flow into that aame 
"Loangwa of the Lake," and others into the Loangwa which 
flows to the southwest, and enters the Zambesi at Zumbo, 
and is here called the " Loangwa of the Maravi." The trees 
were in general scraggy, and covered, exactly as they are in 
the damp climate of the Coast, with lichens resembling orchil- 
la weed. The maize, which loves rather a damp soil, had 
been planted on ridges, to allow the superfluous moisture to 
run off. Every thing indicated a very humid climate, and 
the people Warned us that, as the rains were near, we were 
likely to be prevented from returning by the country becom- 
ing flooded and impassable. 

Villages, as usual encircled by euphorbia hedges, were nu- 
merous, and a great deal of grain had been cultivated around 
them. Domestic fowls in plenty, and pigeons, with dovecots 
like those in Egypt, were seen. The people call themselves 
Matumboka, but the only difference between them and the 
rest of the Manganja is in the mode of tattooing the face. 
Their language is the same. Their distinctive mark consists 
of four tattooed lines diverging from the point between the 
eyebrows, which, in frowning, the muscles form into a furrow. 
The other lines of tattooing, as in all Manganja, run in long 
seams, which, crossing each other at certain angles, form a 
great number of triangular spaces on the breast, back, arms, 
and thighs. The cuticle is divided by a knife, and the edges 
of the incision are drawn apart till the true skin appears. By 
a repetition of this process, lines of raised cicatrices are formed, 
which are thought to give beauty, no matter how much pain 
the fashion gives. 
• The teeth here, as also among the Babisa, are filed to 



550 FILING THE TEETH. Chap. XXV. 

points ; other Manganja notch each of the upper fore-teeth 
by means of small quartz stones : the notch in some is angu- 
lar, in others round ; this latter style gives the edges of the 
upper front teeth a semilunar shape ; other tribes make an 
opening of a triangular shape between the central front teeth. 
It is surprising that the filing and chipping which the teeth 
undergo, that the possessor may be in the fashion, do not pro- 
duce toothache, as is the case with us when a piece is chipped 
off by accident. But teeth here are more solid, and often 
wear down to the gums in old persons without decay, like 
those found in Egyptian mummies. A phrase used to ex- 
press a very aged person is " that he lived so long that his 
gums and teeth were worn quite smooth together." Cases of 
toothache are not at all uncommon nevertheless, though prob- 
ably not so usually met with as among ourselves. This abuse 
of the fine teeth which they possess by nature is common 
among both sexes. They delight also in wearing the hair 
so as to give the head the appearance of being prolonged 
backward and upward. The Babisa are partial to making 
their locks into the form of a dragoon's helmet. 

It would not be worth while to advert for a moment to the 
< routine of traveling, or the little difficulties that beset every 
one who attempts to penetrate into a new country, were it 
not to show the great source of the power here possessed by 
slave-traders. We needed help in carrying our goods while 
our men were ill, though still able to march. When we had 
settled with others for hire, we were often told that the deal- 
ers in men had taken possession of some, and had taken them 
away altogether. Other things led us to believe that the 
slave-traders carry matters with a high hand ; and no won- 
der, for the possession of gunpowder gives them almost ab- 
solute power. The mode by which tribes armed with bows 



Chap. XXV. SUPREMACY OF FIRE-ARMS. 551 

and arrows carry on warfare, or defend themselves, is by am- 
buscade. They never come out in open fight, but wait for 
the enemy ensconced behind trees, or in the long grass of the 
country, and shoot at him unawares. Consequently, if men 
come against them with fire-arms, when, as is usually the case, 
the long grass is all burned off, the tribe attacked are as help- 
less as a wooden ship, possessing only signal guns, would be 
before an iron-clad steamer. The time of year selected for 
this kind of warfare is nearly always that in which the grass 
is actually burnt off, or is so dry as readily to take fire. The 
dry grass in Africa looks more like ripe English wheat late 
in the autumn than any thing else we can compare it to. Let 
us imagine an English village standing in a field of this sort, 
bounded only by the horizon, and enemies setting fire to a 
line of a mile or two by running along with bunches of burn- 
ing straw in their hands, touching here and there the inflam- 
mable material, the wind blowing toward the doomed village 
— the inhabitants with only one or two old muskets, but ten 
to one no powder — the long line of flames, leaping thirty feet 
into the air, with dense masses of black smoke, and pieces of 
charred grass falling down in showers. Would not the stout- 
est English villager, armed only with the bow and arrow 
against the enemy's musket, quail at the idea of breaking 
through that wall of fire? When, at a distance, we once saw 
a scene like this, and had the charred grass, literally as thick 
as flakes of black snow, falling around us, there was no diffi- 
culty in understanding the secret of the slave-trader's power. 
On the 21st of September we arrived at the village of the 
chief Muasi or Muazi; it is surrounded by a stockade, and 
embowered in very tall euphorbia-trees ; their height, thirty 
or forty feet, shows that it has been inhabited for at least one 
generation. A visitation of disease or death causes the head 



552 MEASURING CLOTH. Chap. XXV. 

men to change the site of their villages, and plant new hedges ; 
but, though Muazi has suffered from the attacks of the Mazi- 
tu, he has evidently clung to his birthplace. The village is 
situated about two miles southwest of a high hill called Ka- 
suDgu, which gives the name to a district extending to the 
Loangwa of the Maravi. Several other detached granite hills 
have been shot up on the plain, and many stockaded villages, 
all owing allegiance to Muazi, are scattered over it. 

On our arrival the chief was sitting in the smooth shady 
place called Boalo, where all public business is transacted, 
with about two hundred men and boys around him. We paid 
our guides with due ostentation. Masiko, the tallest of our 
party, measured off the fathom of cloth agreed upon, and made 
it appear as long as possible by facing round to the crowd, and 
cutting a few inches beyond what his outstretched arms could 
reach, to show that there was no deception. This was by way 
of advertisement. The people are mightily gratified at hav- 
ing a tall fellow to measure the cloth for them. It pleases 
them even better than cutting it by a tape-line, though very 
few men of six feet high can measure off their own length 
with their outstretched arms. Here, where Arab traders have 
been, the cubit called mokono, or elbow, begins to take the 
place of the fathom in use farther south. The measure is 
taken from the point of the bent elbow to the end of the mid- 
dle finger. 

We found, on visiting Muazi on the following day, that he 
was as frank and straightforward as could reasonably be ex- 
pected. He did not wish us to go to the N.N.W., because, 
he carries on a considerable trade in ivory there. We were 
anxious to get off the slave route, to people not visited before 
by traders ; but Muazi naturally feared that if we went to 
what is said to be a well- watered country, abounding in ele- 



Chap. XXV. FINE CATTLE— A FLAT COUNTRY. 553 

phants, we might relieve him of the ivory which he now ob- 
tains at a cheap rate, and sells to the slave-traders as they pass 
Kasungu to the east; but at last he consented, warning us 
that " great difficulty would be experienced in obtaining food 
— a district had been depopulated by slave wars — and a night 
or two must be spent in it; but he would give us good 
guides, who would go three days with us before turning, and 
then farther progress must depend on ourselves." Some of 
our men having been ill ever since we mounted this high- 
land plain, we remained two days with Muazi. 

A herd of fine cattle showed that no tsetse existed in the 
district. They had the Indian hump, and were very fat and 
very tame. The boj^s rode on both cows and bulls without 
fear, and the animals were so fat and lazy that the old ones 
only made a feeble attempt to kick their young tormentors. 
Muazi never milks the cows ; he complained that, but for the 
Mazitu having formerly captured some, he should now have 
had very many. They wander over the country at large, 
and certainly thrive. 

Cotton-bushes are rarely seen along the slave route ; this 
is not from soil or climate being unsuitable for them, for we 
passed some specimens which had grown well, and yielded 
cotton of superior quality, but from the fact that the people 
can supply their wants by exchanging grain for foreign calico 
as the slave-traders pass. Many of these highlanders wear 
goatskins. Though they have plenty of food, they are not 
eager sellers. They are accustomed to eager purchasers at a 
very high rate. 

After leaving Muazi's we passed over a flat country sparse- 
ly covered with the scraggy upland trees, but brightened with 
.many fine flowers. The grass was short, reaching no higher 
than the knee, and growing in tufts, with bare spaces between, 



554 RAINS. Chap. XXV. 

though the trees were draped with many various lichens, and 
showed a moist climate. A high and very sharp wind blew 
over the flats; its piercing keenness was not caused by low 
temperature, for the thermometer stood at 80°. 

We now began to notice a very curious circumstance. 
Wherever a Manganja village was placed, a Babisa one was 
sure to appear in the vicinity. The former are the owners 
of the soil, but the latter did not seem to be considered in- 
truders. Indeed, the uncultivated tracts are so large, that it 
would scarcely occur to a people, who have few or no cattle 
or goats, to quarrel about land which they can not use them- 
selves. The shallow valleys, along the sides of which the 
villages were dotted, have, at certain times of the year, rivers 
running through them, which at this time formed only a 
succession of pools, with boggy and sedgy spaces between. 
When the sun is vertical over any part in the tropics on his 
way south, the first rains begin to fall, and the effect of these, 
though copious, is usually only to fill the bogs and pools. 
When, on his way north, he again comes over the same part, 
we have the great rains of the year, and the pools and bogs, 
being already filled, overflow, and produce the great floods 
which mark the Zambesi, and probably in the same manner 
cause the inundations of the Nile. The luxuriant vegetation 
which the partial desiccation of many of these rivers annually 
allows to grow, protects their bottoms and banks from abra- 
sion, and hence the comparative clearness of their water in 
the greater floods. We were now on the sources of the Lo- 
angwa of the Maravi, which enters the Zambesi at Zumbo, 
and were struck by the great resemblance which the boggy 
and sedgy streams here presented to the sources of the Leeba, 
an affluent of the Zambesi formerly observed in Londa, and 
of the Kasai, which some believe to be the principal branch 
of the Congo or Zaire. 



Chap. XXV. SOURCE OF MOISTURE. 555 

The first or lesser rains take place in this region in No- 
vember, when the sun is vertical, going south. The greater 
rains fall in January, February, and March, when he is on his 
way back to the equator. Supposing our observation of the 
cause of inundating floods in south intertropical Africa to be 
applicable to the north intertropical district, the pools, bogs, 
and rivers there might be expected to fill, when the sun be- 
came vertical, on his way south, and overflow on his return. 
But this must be decided on the spot. We know, from the 
observations made for a number of years at Loanda by the 
late Edmund Gabriel, that the same rule as to rainfall, which 
we have noticed from 12° to 20° south, applies in the eighth 
degree from the equator. 

The great source of the supply of moisture for South Af- 
rica is undoubtedly the Indian Ocean. The prevailing winds 
are from the east or southeast. Laden with moisture from 
this great reservoir, the air sweeps up the coast ranges, and, 
cooling in its passage over, deposits the chief portion of its 
aqueous vapor on the heights. Passing westward, it is now 
the dry air that floats, during most of the year, as an east or 
east-southeast wind, over the Kalahari Desert and other arid 
plains. That this view is correct appears evident from the 
facts that where no coast range, or only a low one, exists, the 
central region is not so devoid of moisture as it is where, as 
in the case of the Drakensberg, the air must rise upward of a 
mile in -perpendicular height before it can reach the plains 
beyond ; and that, wherever hills in the interior rise higher 
than those near the coast, their tops are covered with vegeta- 
tion different from that on the plains below them, and requir- 
ing a more abundant supply of moisture. This is seen even 
on the hills close to the Kalahari Desert ; andrfDn other mount- 
ain-tops many species of ferns and some peppers flourish, 
which are never met with at lower altitudes. 



556 LAKE BEMBA. Chap. XXV. 

As we approach nearer the equator, the southwest winds 
from the Atlantic, robbed of their moisture by the western 
slopes, prevail for a certain distance into the continent, and 
probably meet the southeasterly breezes from the Indian 
Ocean. Whether this meeting produces a greater amount of 
rainfall on the Line than elsewhere, as has been asserted, ap- 
pears to require confirmation. Theoretically, the confluence 
of dry winds under the equator would be followed by an up- 
ward and overlapping motion of the currents to the north or 
south. But a hot, dry north wind is quite exceptional on 
the Kalahari Desert, and lasts usually but three days at a 
time. The chief supply for the South African rainfall comes 
from the Indian Ocean to the southeast, in the same way that 
at a later period of the year the southwest monsoon takes 
refreshing rains from the same great reservoir to the plains 
of India. 

We had taken pains to ascertain from the traveled Babisa 
and Arabs as much as possible about the country in front, 
which, from the lessening' time we had at our disposal, we 
feared we could scarcely reach, and had heard a good deal 
of a small lake called Bemba. As we proceeded west, we 
passed over the sources not only of the Loangwa, but of an- 
other stream called Moitawa or Moitala, which was represent- 
ed to be the main feeder of Lake Bemba. This would be of 
little importance but for the fact that.the considerable river 
Luapula or Loapula is said to flow out of Bemba to the west- 
ward, and then to spread out into another and much larger 
lake, named Moero or Moelo. Flowing still farther in the 
same direction, the Loapula forms Lake Mofue or Mofu, and 
after this it is said to pass the town of Cazembe, bend to the 
north, and enter. Lake Tanganyika. Whither the water went 
after it entered the last lake, no one would venture an asser- 



Chap. XXV. NATIVE GEOGRAPHY. 557 

tion; but that the course indicated is the true watershed of 
that part of the country, we believe from the unvarying opin- 
ion of native travelers. There could be no doubt that our 
informants had been in the country beyond Cazembe's, for 
they knew and described chiefs whom we afterward met about 
thirty-five or forty miles west of his town. The Lualaba is 
said to flow into the Loapula ; and when, for the sake of test- 
ing the accuracy of the traveled, it was asserted that all the 
water of the region round the town of Cazembe flowed into 
the Luambadzi or Luambezi (Zambesi), they remarked with 
a smile, " He says that the Loapula flows into the Zambesi ; 
did you ever hear such nonsense?" or words to that effect. 
We were forced to admit that, according to native accounts, 
our previous impression of the Zambesi's draining the coun- 
try about Cazembe's had been a mistake. Their geographical 
opinions are now only stated, without any farther comment 
than that the itinerary given by the Arabs and others shows 
that the Loapula is twice crossed on the way to Cazembe's ; 
and we may add that we have never found any difficulty from 
the alleged incapacity of the negro to tell which way a river 
flows. 

The boiling-point of water showed a descent, from the edge 
of the plateau to our farthest point west, of 170 feet; but this 
can only be considered as an approximation, and no depend- 
ence could have been placed on it, had we not had the courses 
of the streams to confirm this rather rough mode of ascertain- 
ing altitudes. The slope, as shown by the watershed, was to 
the " Loangwa of the Maravi," and toward the Moitala, or 
southwest, west, and northwest After we leave the feeders 
of Lake Nyassa, the water drains toward the centre of the 
continent. The course of the Kasai, a river seen during Dr. 
•Livingstone's journey to the West Coast, and its feeders, was 



558 INDIA AND AFKICA. Chap. XXV. 

to the northeast, or somewhat in the same direction. Wheth- 
er the water thus drained off finds its way out by the Congo 
or by the Nile has not yet been ascertained. Some parts of 
the continent have been said to resemble an inverted dinner- 
plate. This portion seems more of the shape, if shape it has, 
of a wide-awake hat, with the crown a little depressed. The 
altitude of the brim in some parts is considerable ; in others, 
as at Tette and the bottom of Murchison's Cataracts, it is so 
small that it could be ascertained only by eliminating the dai- 
ly variations of the barometer, by simultaneous observations 
on the Coast, and at points some two or three hundred miles 
inland. So long as African rivers remain in what we may 
call the brim, they present no obstructions ; but no sooner do 
they emerge from the higher lands than their utility is im- 
paired by cataracts. The low-lying belt is very irregular ; at 
times sloping up in the manner of the rim of an inverted din- 
ner-plate, while in other cases a high ridge rises near the sea, 
to be succeeded by a lower district inland before we reach the 
central plateau. The breadth of the low lands is sometimes 
as much as three hundred miles, and that breadth determines 
the limits of navigation from the seaward. 

The ascent to the Maravi country, and all along from the 
west shore of the lake for at least three hundred miles on the 
same meridian of longitude, is, as we subsequently found, sim- 
ply what Indians call a ghaut, like that on the way from 
Bombay to Poonah. The African ghaut from the west coast 
of the lake, which is 1300 feet above the sea, rises as high 
above our point of starting here, as the Indian one does from 
the level of the sea at Bombay. The African Deccan is a lit- 
tle higher and cooler than the Indian one is at Poonah. The 
African huts resemble the native Indian ones near Dapoore, 
but are much better built ; in the possession of the plow, the 



Chap. XXV. COMPARISON BETWEEN AFRICA AND INDIA. 559 

Indians have the advantage over the Africans, though both 
cultivate very nearly the same grain. The soil and general 
appearance of the country, trees, nullahs, rivers, and undula- 
ting plains, are remarkably alike in both the African and In- 
dian Deccan ; but in Africa we see patches of fine, long-sta- 
pled cotton, nearly equal to the Egyptian, instead of the mis- 
erable stuff grown in India. The contrast between the two 
countries, however, is very striking. In India, the evidences 
of human labor are every where apparent in roads, bridges, 
stone walls, ruins of temples, and palaces. In Africa, the 
whole country looks, for all that man has done, just as it did 
when it came from the hands of its Maker. The only roads 
are footpaths worn by the feet of the natives into hollows a 
few inches deep, and about fifteen or eighteen inches wide, 
winding from village to village, as if made by believers in the 
curved line being that of beauty, or by people who had al- 
ready attained that state of competence to which we all as- 
pire, when we may toddle round our own little wavy walks 
without hurry. The huts built here have no ruins except 
when they are burned, and then a thin layer of the red clay 
with which they were plastered, and the impressions of the 
reeds which formed the walls, remain, with the color and con- 
sistence of soft bricks. But these soon moulder away ; the 
only durable monuments to be met with are mill-stones, worn 
in the middle a couple of inches or more in depth, and cairns 
in the passes of the mountains, of which tradition has no rec- 
ord; but the salutation addressed to them — "Hail! chief; 
let it be well with us in the country to which we are going I" 
— may mean that they are supposed to be the resting-places 
of departed chiefs. 

It is a very remarkable fact, that while in many parts of 
the world the stone, bronze, and iron instruments of men who 



560 FOSSILS. Chap. XXV. 

have passed away have been found, no flint arrow - heads, 
spears, axes, or other implements of this kind, as far as we 
can ascertain, have ever been discovered in Africa. Dr. Kirk, 
while botanizing in the Delta of the Zambesi, came upon a 
bed of gravel, in which the fossil bones of nearly all the ani- 
mals now living in the country, as hippopotami, wild hogs, 
buffaloes, antelopes, turtles, crocodiles, and hyenas, were asso- 
ciated with pottery of the same nature and ornamental designs 
as that now in common use by the inhabitants. Similar ani- 
mal remains were observed in a bed of gravel in the Zambesi 
in 1856, and now, in 1863, in the sand on the shores of Lake 
Nyassa, pottery was found, with buffalo and other large bones ; 
but in no case have we found a specimen of the weapons with 
which these animals may have been killed for human food. 

In attempting to decipher the testimony of the rocks in the 
Lake and other regions of southern Africa, it had always been 
a sore puzzle that few or none of the regular geological se- 
ries, as described in books, could be made out. The absence 
of marine limestone, and the evidences of the oscillations of 
land and sea, which are so common in other countries, baffled 
our unaided inquiries. No chalk nor flints were ever met 
with. The nearest resemblance to the cretaceous strata were 
immense flat masses of calcareous tufa, and this, from the im- 
pressions of reeds and leaves of the same kind as those now 
growing in the vicinity, was evidently a deposit from land 
springs, which formerly flowed much more copiously than at 
the present day. In association with these tufaceous depos- 
its, ferruginous masses, with gravel imbedded, were observed, 
having all the appearance of the same origin as the tufa. 
Coal was discovered in sandstone, and that had been disturb- 
ed only by the undulations of local igneous irruptions. It 
was only when our far-seeing and sagacious countryman, Sir 



Chap. XXV. AFRICA THE OLDEST CONTINENT. 5$1 

Roderick I. Murchison, collected all the rays of light on the 
subject, from various sources, into the focus of his mind, that 
what we had before but dimly guessed, at length became ap- 
parent. Those great submarine depressions and elevations 
which have so largely affected Europe, Asia, and America 
during the secondary, tertiary, and quasi - modern periods, 
have not affected Africa. In fact, Africa is the oldest conti- 
nent in the world. u It is unquestionably a grand type of a 
region which has preserved its ancient terrestrial conditions 
during a very long period, unaffected by any changes except 
those which are dependent on atmospheric and meteoric in- 
fluences."* 

According to the present state of our knowledge, the Afri- 
cans never had a stone period. The proof of this is merely 
negative, but of the same nature as the evidence that while 
the stone period lasted, no bronze implements were in use ; 
and it does seem a difficulty worth remarking, that while it is 
assumed that, in ancient times, stone for lengthened periods 
alone was in use, we have the evidence of the late Admiral 
Fitzroy (whose recent death — the result of overfatigue in the 
pursuit of his valuable researches — all so greatly lament) that 
the present time is the stone period in Tierra del Fuego and 
some countries whose inhabitants resemble our remote ances- 
tors, and in other parts it is the age of iron. 

It is possibly only a display of ignorance, but we trust it 
will not be imagined to be a proof of conceit when some of 
the ideas which beguiled our weary marches are put forth as 
materials for thought in younger minds. Here at every third 
or fourth village we see a kiln-looking structure, about six 
feet high, by two and a half or three feet in diameter. It is 

* Address to the Royal Geographical Society of London at the anniversary 
meeting on the 23d of May, 1864. / 



562 THE IRON AGE. Chap. XXV. 

a clay, fire-hardened furnace for smelting iron. No flux is 
used, whether the specular iron, the yellow haematite, or mag- 
netic iron ore is fused, and yet capital metal is produced. Na- 
tive manufactured iron is so good that the natives declare 
English iron to be " rotten" in comparison, and specimens of 
African hoes were pronounced at Birmingham to be nearly 
equal to the best Swedish iron. As we passed along, men 
sometimes ran from the fields they were working in, and of- 
fered for sale new hoes, axes, and spears of their own work- 
manship. It is certainly the iron age here ; copper, accord- 
ing to the ideas of the natives who smelt it from malachite, is 
much more intractable than the metal from ironstone, which 
needs no flux ; and as yet, so far as we can learn, neither tin 
nor zinc has ever been used to form an amalgam with copper 
in this country, so that we may expect the bronze age to 
come in an inverted order. Of the flint age as applied to Af- 
rica we are compelled to doubt, because no flints, with the ex- 
ception of a few small agates, are to be found in the southern 
parts of the continent we have examined. A stone period 
might have its course without flints, as other rocks might 
have been used, but the evidence must all be underground. 

We made three long marches beyond Muazi's in a north- 
westerly direction ; the people were civil enough, but refused 
to sell us any food. We were traveling too fast, they said ; 
in fact, they were startled, and before they recovered their 
surprise we were obliged to depart. We suspected that Mu- 
azi had sent them orders to refuse us food, that we might thus 
be prevented from going into the depopulated district ; but 
this may have been mere suspicion, the result of our own un- 
charitable feelings. 

We spent one night at Machambwe's village, and another 
at Chimbuzi's. It is seldom that we can find the head man 



Chap. XXV. NATIVE LANGUAGE. 563 

on first entering a village. He gets out of the way till he 
has heard all about the strangers, or he is actually out in the 
fields looking after his farms. We once thought that when 
the head man came in from a visit of inspection, with his 
spear, bow and arrows, they had been all taken up for the oc- 
casion, and that he had all the while been hidden in some hut 
slyly watching till he heard that the strangers might be trust- 
ed ; but on listening to the details given by these men of the 
appearances of the crops at different parts, and the astonish- 
ing minuteness of the speakers' topography, we were per- 
suaded that in some cases we were wrong, and felt rather hu- 
miliated. Every knoll, hill, mountain, and every peak on a 
range has a name, and so has every water-course, dell, and 
plain. In fact, every feature and portion of the country is so 
minutely distinguished by appropriate names, that it would 
take a lifetime to decipher their meaning. It is not the want, 
but the superabundance of names that misleads travelers, and 
the terms used are so multifarious that good scholars will at 
times scarcely know more than the subject of conversation. 
Though it is a little apart from the topic of the attention 
which the head men pay to agriculture, yet it may be here 
mentioned, while speaking of the fullness of the language, 
that we have heard about a score of words to indicate differ- 
ent varieties of gait — one walks leaning forward or backward, 
swaying from side to side, loungingly or smartly, swagger- 
ingly, swinging the arms or only one arm, head down or up, 
or otherwise; each of these modes of walking was expressed 
by a particular verb ; and more words were used to designate 
the different varieties of fools than we ever tried to count. 

Mr. Moffat has translated the whole Bible into the language 
of the Bechuana, and has diligently studied this tongue for 
the last forty -four years; and, though knowing far more of 



564 CHINANG A— GRANITIC HILLS. Chap. XXY. 

the language than any of the natives who have been reared 
on the Mission -station of Kuruman, he does not pretend to 
have mastered it fully even yet. However copious it may be 
in terms of which we do not feel the necessity, it is poor in 
others, as in abstract terms, and words used to describe men- 
tal operations. 

Our third day's march ended in the afternoon of the 27th 
of September, 1863, at the village of Chinanga, on the banks 
of a branch of the Loangwa. A large, rounded mass of gran- 
ite, a thousand feet high, called Nombe rume, stands on the 
plain a few miles off. It is quite remarkable, because it has 
so little vegetation on it. Several other granitic hills stand 
near it, ornamented with trees, like most heights of this coun- 
try, and a heap of blue mountains appears away in the north. 



Chap. XXVI. REASONS FOR RETURNING. 565 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

Reasons for returning. — Dispatch from H. M.'s Government. — A Thief. — Af- 
rican Women rarely address Strangers. — Employments of Women. — Grind- 
ing Corn. — Brewing Beer. — Drinking-bouts. 

The effect of the piercing winds upon the men had never 
been got rid of. Several had been unable to carry a load 
ever since we ascended to the highlands; we had lost one, 
and another poor lad was so ill as to cause us great anxiety. 
By waiting in this village, which was so old that it was full 
of vermin, all became worse. Oar European food was en- 
tirely expended, and native meal, though finely ground, has 
so many sharp, angular particles in it, that it brought back 
dysentery, from which we had suffered so much in May. We 
could scarcely obtain food for the men. The head man of 
this village of Chinanga was off in a foray against some peo- 
ple farther north, to supply slaves to the traders expected 
along the slave route we had just left, and was said, after hav- 
ing expelled the inhabitants, to be living in their stockade 
and devouring their corn. The conquered tribe had pur- 
chased what was called a peace by presenting the conqueror 
with three women. 

This state of matters afforded us but a poor prospect of 
finding more provisions in that direction than we could with 
great difficulty and at enormous prices obtain here. But nei- 
ther want of food, dysentery, nor slave wars would have pre- 
vented our working our way round the Lake in some other 
direction, had we had time ; but we had received orders from 
the Foreign Office to take the Pioneer down to the sea in the 



566 DISPATCH FROM GOVERNMENT. Chap. XXVI. 

previous April. The salaries of all the men in her were posi- 
tively " in any case to cease by the 31st of December." The 
dispatch from the Foreign Office having been sent open to 
the Governor of the Cape, it seems to have been forwarded in 
the same free and easy way to its destination ; for the new 
bishop's chaplain had commented freely before a number of 
Portuguese, Dr. Kirk, and Mr. Charles Livingstone, at Quilli- 
mane, on its different paragraphs, and more especially on the 
omission of all notice of the Lady ISTyassa. When his serv- 
ant brought it up to the Pioneer, he hailed the crew in strong 
Surrey dialect with, "I say, no more pay for you chaps after 
December. I brings the letter as says it." Though we never 
for a single moment entertained the idea that this grossly dis- 
respectful way of treating a dispatch from H. M. principal 
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs was any thing more 
than the result of want of knowledge of the world on the part 
of those who had probably never in their lives seen a govern- 
ment dispatch before, yet the conviction that all the Pioneer's 
men knew that their wages might not be forthcoming if we 
were in the river after December, had some influence on a 
mind borne down by that most depressing of diseases, dysen- 
tery. We were said to be only ten days distant from Lake 
Bemba. We might speculate on a late rise of the river. A 
month or six weeks would secure a geographical feat, but the 
rains were near. We had been warned by different people 
that the rains were close at hand, and that we should then be 
bogged and unable to travel. The flood in the river might 
be an early one, or so small in volume as to give but one 
chance of the Pioneer descending to the ocean. The Mako- 
lolo, too, were becoming dispirited by sickness and want of 
food, and were naturally anxious to be back to their fields in 
time for sowing. But, in addition to all this and more, it was 



Chap. XXVI. A THIEF. 567 

felt that it would not be dealing honestly with the govern- 
ment were we, for the sake of a little eclat, to risk the deten- 
tion of the Pioneer up the river during another year, so we 
decided to return ; and though we had afterward the mortifi- 
cation to find that we were detained two full months at the 
ship waiting for the flood which we expected immediately 
after our arrival there, the chagrin was lessened by a con- 
sciousness of having acted in a fair, honest, above-board man- 
ner throughout. 

On the night of the 29th of September a thief came to the 
sleeping-place of our men and stole a leg of a goat. On com- 
plaining to the deputy head man, he said that the thief had 
fled, but would be caught. He suggested a fine, and offered a 
fowl and her eggs ; but, wishing that the thief alone should be 
punished, it was advised that he should be found and fined. 
The Makololo thought it best to take the fowl as a means of 
making the punishment certain. After settling this matter on 
the last day of September, we commenced our return journey. 
We had just the same time to go back to the ship that we had 
spent in coming to this point, and there is not much to inter- 
est one in marching over the same ground a second time. 

While on our journey northwest, a cheery old woman, who 
had once been beautiful, but whose white hair now contrast- 
ed strongly with her dark complexion, was working briskly 
in her garden as we passed. She seemed to enjoy a hale, 
hearty old age. She saluted us with what elsewhere would 
be called a good address ; and, evidently conscious that she 
deserved the epithet " dark but comely," answered each of us 
with a frank "Yes, my child." Another motherly-looking 
woman, sitting by a well, began the conversation by " You 
are going to visit Muazi, and you have come from afar, have 
you not?" But, in general, women never speak to strangers 



568 MUAZI'S WIFE. Chap. XXVI. 

unless spoken to, so any thing said by them attracts attention. 
Muazi once presented us with a basket of corn. On hinting 
that we had no wife to grind our corn, his buxom spouse 
struck in with roguish glee, and said, " I will grind it for you, 
and leave Muazi, to accompany and cook for you in the land 
of the setting sun." As a rule, the women are modest and 
retiring in their demeanor, and, without being oppressed with 
toil, show a great deal of industry. The crops need about 
eight months' attention; then, when the harvest is home, 
much labor is required to convert it into food as porridge, or 
beer. The corn is pounded in a large wooden mortar, like 
the ancient Egyptian one, with a pestle six feet long and 
about four inches thick. The pounding is performed by 
two or even three women at one mortar. Each, before de- 
livering a blow with her pestle, gives an upward jerk of the 
body, so as to put strength into the stroke, and they keep ex- 
act time, so that two pestles are never in the mortar at the 
same moment. The measured thud, thud, thud, and the 
women standing at their vigorous work, are associations in- 
separable from a prosperous African village. By the opera- 
tion of pounding, with the aid of a little water, the hard out- 
side scale or husk of the grain is removed, and the corn is 
made fit for the millstone. The meal irritates the stomach 
unless cleared from the husk; without considerable energy 
in the operator, the husk sticks fast to the corn. Solomon 
thought that still more vigor than is required to separate the 
hard husk or bran from wheat would fail to separate " a fool 
from his folly." " Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a 
mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolish- 
ness depart from him." The rainbow, in some parts, is called 
the *' pestle of the Barimo," or gods. Boys and girls, by con- 
stant practice with the pestle, are able to plant stakes in the 



Chap. XXVI. 



WOMAN GRINDING CORN. 



569 



ground by a somewhat similar action, in erecting a hut, so 
deftly that they never miss the first hole made. 

Let any one try by repeatedly jobbing a pole with all his 
force to make a deep hole in the ground, and he will under- 
stand how difficult it is always to strike it into the same spot. 

As we were sleeping one night outside a hut, but near 
enough to hear what was going on within, an anxious mother 
began to grind her corn about two o'clock in the morning. 
"Ma," inquired a little girl, " why grind in the dark?" 
Mamma advised sleep, and administered material for a sweet 
dream to her darling by saying, " I grind meal to buy a cloth 
from the strangers which will make you look a little lady." 
An observer of these primitive races is struck continually 
with such little trivial touches of genuine human nature. 

The mill consists of a block of granite, syenite, or even 
mica schist, fifteen or eighteen inches square and five or six 
thick, with a piece of quartz or other hard rock about the size 
of half a brick, one side of which has a convex surface, and fits 
into a concave hollow in the larger and stationary stone. The 




Woman grinding. 



570 ' EMPLOYMENTS OF WOMEN. Chap. XXVI. 

workwoman, kneeling, grasps this upper millstone with both 
hands, and works it backward and forward in the hollow of 
the lower millstone in the same way that a baker works his 
dough when pressing it and pushing from him. The weight 
of the person is brought to bear on the movable stone, and 
while it is pressed and pushed forward and backward, one 




Native Mill for grinding Corn. 

hand supplies every now and then a little grain to be thus at 
first bruised and then ground on the lower stone, which is 
placed on the slope, so that the meal, when ground, falls on 
to a skin or mat spread for the purpose. This is perhaps the 
most primitive form of mill, and anterior to that in Oriental 
countries, where two women grind at one mill, and may have 
been that used by Sarah of old when she entertained the 
angels. 

Another part of the work of women is in the preparation 
of beer. The malted grain is sun-dried and pounded into 
meal, then cooked or brewed. A merry-making often im- 
plies that all who come to make merry shall bring their hoes, 
and let off the excitement of the liquor by a substantial day's 
hoeing. At other times, a couple shut themselves up in their 
huts on pretense of sickness, and drink the whole brewing 
themselves. But a more common mode is to invite all the 



Chap. XXVI. BREWING BEER. 571 

friends and relatives of the woman whose beer is to be drunk, 
and they rejoice in the entertainment, and praise the good- 
wife's ale as so good that the " taste reaches right to the 
back of the neck," or in proper native gourmand's phrase 
declare the feast to be so recherche that every step they take 
homeward will cause their stomachs to say "tobu, tobu, tobu." 
None but a churl would grudge them this, the enjoyment, 
though a poor one, of their lives. Bless their hearts, let them 
rejoice in the fruits of their labor! We confess, however, 
that we have never witnessed the plenty which their land 
yields without turning in imagination to the streets and lanes 
of our cities, and lamenting that the squalid offspring of pov- 
erty and sin has not more pleasant lines in this world, where 
there is so much and to spare. 



572 CLEARINGS IN FORESTS. Chap. XXVII. 



CHAPTEE XXVII. 

Clearings in Forests. — Resemblance of Hunters to ancient Egyptian Figures. 
— Muazi. — Difficulty about Guides. — Babisa undertake to lead us to Chin- 
samba's. — Babisa and Manganja Heads. — Different Characteristics. — Dia- 
lects different, though akin. — Nkoma. — The Bua. — We are taken for Mazi- 
tu, and treated accordingly. — Intractable Head Man. — Well-broken- in Hus- 
band. — Oppressive Stillness of the deserted Country. — Bangwe*. — Meet the 
Mazitu. — Show a bold Front with Success. — Zachariah mends his Pace. — 
We are taken for a War Party. — On the 8th of October we reach Molamba 
on Lake Nyassa. — The unpaid Guide and his doings. — Polygamy. — Loapula 
and Tanganyika. — Babisa's knowledge of the Interior tested. — False Alarm 
of Mazitu. — Prevailing direction of Wind easterly. — Shores of the Lake. — 
Fugitives and their Distress. — Tobacco-traders attacked by Mazitu. — Guns 
versus Bows. — Mosapo. — Chinsamba's. — Minute Information of a Chief. — 
Africans not so degraded as described. — Presents. — Guides. — Brisk Slave- 
trading. — Sad Thoughts. — On the loth of October we reach Katosa's. — His 
description of the Conduct of the Ajawa. — Their admiration of Red Hair. 
— Sugar-cane probably indigenous. — Bamboos. — Katosa is invested in an 
Officer's Coat and Epaulets. — His present Village and his former one. — On 
the 20th of October we arrive at Motunda's. — Hidden Stores of Provisions. 
— Kabambe and Nyango. — The Goa or Gova Valley. — The Lesungwe. — 
Kindness of Native Women. — On the 31st of October we reach the Mukuru- 
Madse. — Thunder and Rain. — Wet Clothes and Fever. 

We passed several clearings, each a mile or more square, 
in which all the trees had been cut down, and the stumps left 
only two or three feet high. The felled wood was gathered 
into heaps, about fifty yards long by thirty broad, and, when 
dry, was burned. The ashes were spread on these cleared 
spots, and a species of millet, called Maere, was raised, of which 
the natives seemed very fond, though to our stomachs the 
meal was as indigestible as so much coarse sand. On one 
side of these cleared spaces the hunters set large strong nets 
made of baobab bark, into which they drive the game. We 
saw about a dozen hartebeests, which were small in size, and 



Chap. XXVII. DIFFICULTY ABOUT GUIDES. 573 

a few zebras, on these uplands. We were struck with the re- 
semblance the men carrying their hunting-nets bore to figures 
in ancient Egyptian tombs, but the proportion of these hunt- 
ers to the population was very small. The Africans here, as 
a rule, are of the agricultural class, and, when they have a 
prospect of reaping their grain in peace, must enjoy a pretty 
comfortable life. 

On the 2d of October we applied to Muazi for guides to 
take us straight down to Chinsamba's at Mosapo, and thus cut 
off an angle which we should otherwise make by going back 
to Kota-kota Bay. He replied that his people knew the short 
way to Chinsamba's that we desired to go, but that they all 
were afraid to venture there on account of the Zulus, or Ma- 
zitu. We therefore started back on our old route, and, after 
three hours' march, found some Babisa in a village who prom- 
ised to lead us to Chinsamba. 

We meet with these keen traders every where. They are 
easily known by a line of horizontal cicatrices, each half an 
inch long, down the middle of the forehead and chin. They 
often wear the hair collected in a mass on the upper and 
back part of the head, while it is all shaven off the forehead 
and temples. The Babisa and Waiau or Ajawa heads have 
more of the round bullet-shape than those of the Manganja, 
indicating a marked difference in character ; the former peo- 
ple being great traders and travelers, the latter being attach- 
ed to home and agriculture. The Manganja usually intrust 
their ivory to the Babisa to be sold at the Coast, and com- 
plain that the returns made never come up to the high prices 
which they hear so much about before it is sent. In fact, by 
the time the Babisa return, the expenses of the journey, in 
which they often spend a month or two at a place where 
food abounds, usually eat up all the profits. 



574 A CHILD SOLD FOR TOBACCO— NKOMA. Chap. XXVII. 

The Babisa have a different dialect from the Manganja, but 
all readily converse together. In passing among the different 
tribes, it is only necessary to know one dialect well, and then 
interpreters are easily found. Masiko, one of the Makololo, 
had already acquired a fair knowledge of the Manganja dia- 
lect, and proved a good medium of communication. To our 
ears the tongue of the Matumboka seemed more fully devel- 
oped than that of the same tribe, Manganja orWanyassa, far- 
ther south. The verb, for instance, shows the passive and 
past tenses here, while among tribes in contact with foreign- 
ers on the Zambesi these distinctions are seldom noticed. 
Our new companions were trading in tobacco, and had col- 
lected quantities of the round balls, about the size of nine- 
pounder shot, into which it is formed. One of them owned 
a woman whose child had been sold that morning for tobac- 
co. The mother followed him, weeping silently, for hours 
along the way we went ; she seemed to be well known, for at 
several hamlets the women spoke to ker with evident sympa- 
thy ; we could do nothing to alleviate her sorrow : the child 
would be kept until some slave-trader passed, and then sold 
for calico. The different cases of slave-trading observed by 
us are mentioned, in order to give a fair idea of its details. 

We spent the first night, after leaving the slave-route, at 
the village of Nkoma, among a section of Manganja, called 
Machewa or Macheba, whose district extends to the Bua. 
Nkoma might be called an agricultural smith, for he had a 
smelting furnace, and abundance of grain and goats, with 
which he showed much more generosity than we had met 
with on the slave-route. On the 5th of October we came to 
the Bua, which has here quite as rocky a bed as where we 
crossed it lower down. Mount Ngalla was on our right, and 
several hills on our left ; the country generally is undulating, 



Chap. XXVII. GARDENING— TAKEN FOR MAZITU. 575 

and covered with scraggy trees, many of which seemed pol- 
larded, from having been cut down to make clearings for 
hunting. Every where we came upon people in their gar- 
dens, busily preparing for the approaching rains. The men 
were up the trees, lopping off the branches, to prevent the 
shade injuring the crops below, or were clearing away the 
shoots from stumps formerly cut. Sometimes a woman is seen 
hoeing alone, or she has a couple of boys collecting the weeds 
and grass into bundles to be burned. At other times the 
whole family is working briskly, or all the neighbors are col- 
lected to give a day's hoeing for a quantity of beer. Our 
guides always asked these gatherings " if all the beer were 
drunk." Some of the women were watering their patches of 
maize and pumpkins from the running streams with calabash- 
es and pots. About the end of the hot dry season they make 
holes about the gardens, and sow maize in them, and water 
it till the rains begin. This plan gives the maize and pump- 
kins a start in the race toward harvest. The consequence is, 
that the owner has fresh green maize to eat some six weeks 
after the commencement of the regular showers. 

The next village at which we slept was also that of a Man- 
ganja smith. It was a beautiful spot, shaded with tall eu- 
phorbia-trees. The people at first fled, but after a short time 
returned, and ordered us off to a stockade of Babisa, about 
a mile distant. We preferred to remain in the smooth shady 
spot outside the hamlet to being pent up in a treeless stock- 
ade. Twenty or thirty men came dropping in, all fully armed 
with bows and arrows ; some of them were at least six feet 
four in height, yet these giants were not ashamed to say, "We 
thought that you were Mazitu, and, being afraid, ran away." 
Their orders to us were evidently inspired by terror, and so 
must the refusal of the head man to receive a cloth, or lend 



576 INTKACTABLE HEAD MAN. Chap. XXVII. 

us a hut have been ; but, as we never had the opportunity of 
realizing what feelings a successful invasion would produce, 
we did not know whether to blame them or not. The head 
man, a tall old smith, with an enormous, well-made knife of 
his own workmanship, came quietly round, and, inspecting 
the shelter, which, from there being abundance of long grass 
and bushes near, our men put up for us in half an hour, grad- 
ually changed his tactics, and in the evening presented us 
with a huge pot of porridge and a deliciously well - cooked 
fowl, and made an apology for having been so rude to stran- 
gers, and a lamentation that he had been so foolish as to re- 
fuse the fine cloth we had offered. Another cloth was of 
course presented, and we had the pleasure of parting good 
friends next day. 

We were not always so fortunate. Once, after a long, wea- 
ry march, we were seeking a convenient spot to spend the 
night in : the path led through a village, but the head man 
tried to prevent our entering it. Without paying any atten- 
tion to his vociferations, we went on, and had reached the 
other side of his hamlet, intending to sleep elsewhere, when 
something he said induced us to turn back and sit down in 
the open space in the centre of his castles. He ran off, and, 
though we spent two nights there, we labored in vain to bring 
him to terms. During the first night he tried to steal a blan- 
ket off one of the sleepers, and threw a horn among us con- 
taining witchcraft medicine : the next night he hurled a more 

* 
potent missile into our midst in the shape of a big stone. His 

neighbors, to whom we spoke about his conduct, seemed to 
think little of it : "It was like the man, and it was no matter." 
Our guide, who belonged to the stockade near to which 
we had slept, declined to risk himself farther than his home. 
While waiting to hire another, Masiko attempted to purchase 



Chap. XXVII. DEFERENCE TO WOMEN. 577 

a goat, and had nearly concluded the bargain, when the wife 
of the would-be seller came forward and said to her husband, 
"You appear as if you were unmarried ; selling a goat with- 
out consulting your wife ; what an insult to a woman ! What 
sort of man are you ?" Masiko urged the man, saying, "Let 
us conclude the bargain, and never mind her ;" but he, being 
better instructed, replied, " No, I have raised a host against 
myself already," and refused. If this was a fair specimen of 
domestic life, the women here have the same influence that 
they have in Londa, farther west, and in many parts north of 
the Zambesi, where we have known a wife order a husband 
not to sell a fowl, merely, as we supposed, to show us stran- 
gers that she had the upper hand. We conjectured that def- 
erence was commonly shown to women here, because, as in 
the West, the exclamation most commonly used was, "Oh my 
mother!" We heard it frequently some thirty miles east of 
this, when the inhabitants took us for the Mazitu. South of 
the Zambesi the exclamation oftenest heard is " My father." 

We now pushed on to the east, so as to get down to the 
shores of the Lake, and into the parts where we were known. 
The country was beautiful, well wooded, and undulating, but 
the villages were all deserted ; and the flight of the people 
seemed to have been quite recent, for the grain was standing 
in the corn-safes untouched. The tobacco, though ripe, re- 
mained uncut in the gardens, and the whole country was 
painfully quiet : the oppressive stillness quite unbroken by 
the singing of birds, or the shrill calls of women watching 
their corn. 

On passing a beautiful village called Bangwe, surrounded 
by shady trees, and placed in a valley among mountains, we 
were admiring the beauty of the situation, when some of the 
much-dreaded Mazitu, with their shields, ran out of the ham- 

Oo 



578 WE MEET THE MAZITU. Chap. XXVII. 

let, from which we were a mile distant. They began to scream 
to their companions to give us chase. Without quickening 
our pace, we walked on, and soon were in a wood, through 
which the footpath we were following led. The first intima- 
tion we had of the approaching Mazitu was given by the Jo- 
hanna man Zachariah, who always lagged behind, running up, 
screaming as if for his life. The bundles were all put in one 
place to be defended, and Masiko and Dr. Livingstone walked 
a few paces back to meet the coming foe. Masiko knelt down 
anxious to fire, but was ordered not to do so. For a second 
or two dusky forms appeared among the trees, and the Mazi- 
tu were asked, in their own tongue, "What do you want?" 
Masiko adding, " What do you say ?" No answer was given, 
but the dark shade in the forest vanished. They had evi- 
dently taken us for natives, and the sight of a white man was 
sufficient to put them to flight. Had we been nearer the 
Coast, where the people are accustomed to the slave-trade, we 
should have found this affair a more difficult one to deal 
with ; but, as a rule, the people of the interior are much more 
mild in character than those on the confines of civilization. 

The above very small adventure was all the danger we 
were aware of in this journey ; but a report was spread from 
the Portuguese villages on the Zambesi, similar to several ru- 
mors that had been raised before, that Dr. Livingstone had 
been murdered by the Makololo, and very unfortunately the 
report reached England before it could be contradicted. 

One benefit arose from the Mazitu adventure. Zachariah, 
and others who had too often to be reproved for lagging be- 
hind, now took their places in the front rank ; and we had no 
difficulty in making very long marches for several days, for 
all believed that the Mazitu would follow our footsteps, and 
attack us while we slept. 



Chap. XXVII. REACH MOLAMBA. 579 

Before commencing the actual descent to the valley of the 
Lake, we passed through a very hilly district, cut up with 
many gullies, and covered with trees. Several times, as we 
entered a deep valley, or climbed a steep hill, our ears were 
saluted by the cry of " Nkondo ! Nkondo !" (War! War!) 
and with the shrill wail of the women, " Mae !" (0 moth- 
er !) The inhabitants answered our inquiries about the paths 
from the heights, but none came near us. The path we de- 
scended by at last was very cleverly chosen ; it ran along the 
spurs rising from different points of the side of the great val- 
ley, and was comparatively level for thirty miles. The dis- 
tance from the top of the plateau to the valley below was 
about fifty miles ; and when we met people coming from the 
plains to collect wild fruit in the forests, they took it as great 
news that we had actually seen live Mazitu. The district 
into which we descended was still called Bango, and a fine 
stream, named Furisa, flowed through it into the Lake. Here 
the people had large fields of maize in ear, which had been 
raised in holes in the dry season by the aid of the water, that 
percolates from the Furisa through the sand. 

On the 8th of October we arrived at Molamba, on the banks 
• of the Lake, and had a delicious bath. We were desirous of 
seeing ISTkomo, the head man, again, because a guide whom 
he had given us had not been paid. Occasionally we have 
been ill served, and sometimes deserted by the men we have 
employed. Indeed, if one were inclined to make a wail about 
the miseries of traveling, an important item would be the dif- 
ficulties about guides ; they don't much relish the task of 
serving vagrants, nor should we. In this case, however, we 
had been the delinquents. The man, after going fifteen miles, 
suddenly stopped on the march, and said that he was going 
to leave us. He was told to come on to the next village, and 



580 TOBACCO-TRADERS. Chap. XXVII. 

that we should rest there and pay him his wages. We never 
saw him again. On telling this to Nkomo, we ascertained 
that in taking this particular guide we had been unconscious- 
ly aiding an elopement of two of the head man's wives. 
While marching along with us, the guide had been telegraph- 
ing to the ladies behind, and appeared to have received the 
signal to strike off to the west of our course when he pro- 
posed to leave us. From the numerous instances of the po- 
lygamist's sorrows which we have observed, we should sup- 
pose that he can have but few joys ; but still there is some- 
thing to be said, we dare say, on both sides. Polygamy is 
certainly a cause of misery to the children, who become par- 
takers of all the petty jealousies, hate, and quarrels of the dif- 
ferent mothers. 

A party of Babisa tobacco-traders came from the "N.W. to 
Molamba while we. were there, and one of them asserted sev- 
eral times that the Loapula, after emerging from Moelo, re- 
ceived the Lulua, and then flowed into Lake Mofu, and thence 
into Tanganyika, and from the last-named Lake into the sea. 
This is the native idea of the geography of the interior; and, 
to test the general knowledge of our informant, we asked him 
about our acquaintances in Londa, as Moene, Katema, Shinde 
or Shinte, who live southwest of the rivers mentioned, and 
found that our friends there were perfectly well known to 
him and to others of these traveled natives. In the eveninsr 
two of the Babisa came in, and reported that the Mazitu had 
followed us to the village called Chigaragara, at which we 
slept at the bottom of the descent. The whole party of trad- 
ers set off at once, though the sun had set. We ourselves had 
given rise to the report, for the women of Chigaragara, sup- 
posing us in the distance to be Mazitu, fled, with all their 
household utensils on their heads, and had no opportunity 



Chap. XXVII. FUGITIVES AND THEIR DISTRESS. 581 

afterward of finding out their mistake. "We spent the night 
where we were, and next morning, declining Nkomo's en- 
treaty to go and kill elephants, took our course along the 
shores of the Lake southward. 

"We have only been at the Lake at one season of the year : 
then the wind blows strongly from the east, and, indeed, this 
is its prevailing direction hence to the Orange Eiver ; a north 
or a south wind is rare, and seldom lasts more than three 
days. As the breeze now blew over a large body of water 
toward us, it was delightful ; but when facing it on the table- 
land it was so strong as materially to impede our progress, 
and added considerably to the labor of traveling. Here it 
brought large quantities of the plant ( Vallisnerice), from which 
the natives extract salt by burning, and which, if chewed, at 
once shows its saline properties by the taste. Clouds of the 
kungo, or edible midges, floated on the Lake, and many rest- 
ed on the bushes on land. 

The reeds along the shores of the Lake were still crowded 
with fugitives, and a great loss of life must since have taken 
place ; for, after the corn they had brought with them was 
expended, famine would ensue. Even now we passed many 
women and children digging up the roots, about the size of 
peas, of an aromatic grass ; and their wasted forms showed 
that this poor hard fare was to allay, if possible, the pangs of 
hunger. The babies at the breast crowed to us as we passed, 
their mothers kneeling and grubbing for the roots ; the poor 
little things, still drawing nourishment from the natural fount- 
ain, were unconscious of that sinking of heart which their 
parents must have felt in knowing that the supply for the 
little ones must soon fail. ]So one would sell a bit of food to 
us : fishermen, even, would not part with the produce of their 
nets, except in exchange for some other kind of food. Num.- 



582 TOBACCO-TRADERS ATTACKED. Chap. XXVII. 

bers of newly-made graves showed that many had already 
perished, and hundreds were so emaciated that they had the 
appearance of human skeletons swathed in brown and wrink- 
led leather. In passing mile after mile marked with these 
sad proofs that " man's inhumanity to man makes countless 
thousands mourn," one experiences an overpowering sense 
of helplessness to alleviate human woe, and breathes a silent 
prayer to the Almighty to hasten the good time coming, when 
" man and man the world o'er shall brothers be for all that." 
One small redeeming consideration in all this misery could 
not but be felt ; these ills were inflicted by heathen Mazitu, 
and not by or for those who say to Him who is higher than 
the highest, "We believe that thou shalt come to be our 
judge." 

We crossed the Mokole, rested at Chitanda, and then left 
the Lake, and struck away 1ST.W. to Chinsamba's. Our com- 
panions, who were so much oppressed by the rarefied air of 
the plateau, still showed signs of exhaustion, though now 
only 1300 feet above the sea, and did not recover flesh and 
spirits till we again entered the Lower Shire Valley, which is 
of so small an altitude that, without simultaneous observa- 
tions with the barometer there and on the sea-coast, the dif- 
ference would not be appreciable. 

On a large plain on which we spent one night, we had the 
company of eighty tobacco-traders on their way from Kasun- 
gu to Chinsamba's. The Mazitu had attacked and killed two 
of them near the spot where the Zulus fled from us without 
answering our questions. The traders were now so frightened 
that, instead of making a straight course with us, they set off 
by night to follow the shores of the Lake to Tsenga, and then 
turn west. It is the sight of shields or guns that inspires 
terror. The bowmen feel perfectly helpless when' the enemy 



Chap. XXVII. STOCKADE OF CH1NSAMBA. 583 

comes with even the small protection the skin shield affords, 
or attacks them in the open field with guns. They may shoot 
a few arrows, but they are such poor shots that ten to one if 
they hit. The only thing that makes the arrow formidable 
is the poison ; for if the poisoned barb goes in, nothing can 
save the wounded. A bow is in use in the lower end of Lake 
Nyassa, but is more common in the Maravi country, from six 
to eight inches broad, which is intended to be used as a shield 
as well as a bow ; but we never saw one with the mark on it 
of an enemy's arrow. It certainly is no match for the Zulu 
shield, which is between four and five feet long, of an oval 
shape, and about two feet broad. So great is the terror this 
shield inspires 4hat we sometimes doubted whether the Mazi- 




Maravi Bow. 



tu here were Zulus at all, and suspected that the people of the 
country took advantage of that fear, and, assuming shields, 
pretended to belong to that nation. 

On the 11th of October we arrived at the stockade of Chin- 
samba in Mosapo, and had reason to be very well satisfied 
with his kindness. A parafiine candle was in his eyes the 
height of luxury, and the ability to make a light instantane- 
ously by a lucifer match a marvel that struck him with won- 
der. He brought all his relatives in different groups to see 
the strange sights — instantaneous fire-making, and a light, 
without the annoyance of having fire and smoke in the mid- 
dle of the floor. When they wish to look for any thing in 
the dark, a wisp of dried grass is lighted. Our books, too, 
were objects of admiration. The idea that enters their minds 



584 INFORMATION OF CHINSAMBA. Chap. XXVII. 

is that books are our instruments of divination. Theirs are 
bits of wood, horn, and knuckle-bones of different animals, or 
the scales of the Manis, which, according to the way they 
alight when thrown on the ground, indicate which way the 
diviner is to answer the inquiries which have been put to 
him. The sextant and artificial horizon — the weight of the 
mercury — called by our men "foreign water," were all pon- 
dered over with the same kind of interest that we should take 
for the first time in any new and wonderful thing. In many 
hundreds of instances in which we have sat with a lantern 
star-gazing, we never once, as far as we know, excited the 
suspicion of being engaged in the practice of witchcraft. Be- 
ing fully aware of the general belief in wizards and witches, 
it has often been a matter of surprise to us that no accusation 
ever reached our ears that this "foreign water" must be used 
for something else than measuring distances, and to help in 
writing down the paths of the new country. The only rea- 
son we can conceive for our immunity is the fact that we 
have invariably tried to give a truthful explanation of what 
we were doing. In the case of Sequasha, mentioned in an 
earlier portion of this work, we suspect that he told the peo- 
ple that the clocks for which he was fined were his fetishes 
or charms. 

Chinsamba gave us a great deal of his company during our 
visits. As we have often remarked in other cases, a chief 
has a great deal to attend to in guiding the affairs of his peo- 
ple. He is consulted on all occasions, and gives his advice 
in a stream of words, which show a very intimate acquaint- 
ance with the topography of his district ; he knows every 
rood cultivated, every weir put in the river, every hunting- 
net, loom, gorge, and every child of his tribe. Any addition 
made to the number of these latter is notified to him, and he 
sends thanks and compliments to the parents. 



Chap. XXVII. PRESENTS. 585 

After a great deal of intercourse with different rulers, we 
have been unable to discover the grounds on which "sensa- 
tion writers 1 ' have managed to envelop African chiefs with 
an air of ridicule. As the head men, and people too, are 
found to deteriorate as we approach the borders of civiliza- 
tion, it is probable that the stupid bestiality, described by the 
writers referred to, on the West Coast, may be a reflection 
from the low* trading characters with whom many of the 
chieftains there have had their only intercourse. When a 
chief has made any inquiries from us, we have found that we 
gave most satisfaction in our answers when we tried to fancy 
ourselves in the position of the interrogator, and him in that 
of a poor uneducated fellow-countryman in England. The 
polite, respectable way of speaking and behavior of what we 
call a " thorough gentleman" almost always secure the friend- 
ship and good-will of the Africans. 

The presents which, following the custom of the country, 
we gave to every head man, where we either spent a night or 
a longer period, varied from four to eight yards of calico. 
We had some Manchester cloths made in imitation of the na- 
tive manufactured robes of the West Coast, each worth five 
or six shillings. To the more important of the chiefs, for 
calico we substituted one of these strong gaudy dresses, iron 
spoons, a knife, needles, a tin dish, or pannikin, and found 
these presents to be valued more than three times their value 
in cloth would have been. Eight or ten shillings' worth gave 
abundant satisfaction to the greediest ; but this is to be un- 
derstood as the prime cost of the articles, and a trader would 
sometimes have estimated similar generosity as equal to from 
£30 to £50. In some cases, the presents we gave exceeded 
the value of what was received in return ; in others, the ex- 
cess of generosity was on the native side. 



586 GUIDES-BRISK SLAVE-TRADING. Chap. XXVII. 

We never asked for leave to pass through the country ; 
we simply told where we were going, and asked for guides ; 
if they were refused, or if they demanded payment before- 
hand, we requested to be put into the beginning of the path, 
and said that we were sorry we could not agree about the 
guides, and usually they and we started together. Greater 
care would be required on entering the Mazitu or Zulu coun- 
try, for there the government extends over very large dis- 
tricts, while among the Manganja each little district is inde- 
pendent of every other. The people here have not adopted 
the exacting system of the Banyai, or of the people whose 
country was traversed by Speke and Grant. 

In our way back from Chinsamba's to Chembi's, and from 
his village to Nkwinda's, and thence to Katosa's, we only saw 
the people working in their gardens, near to the stockades. 
These strong-holds were strengthened with branches of aca- 
cias covered with strong hooked thorns, and were all crowd- 
ed with people. The air was now clearer than when we went 
north, and we could see the hills of Kirk's Eange five or six 
miles to the west of our path. The sun struck very hot, and 
the men felt it most in their feet. Every one who could get 
a bit of goatskin made it into a pair of sandals. 

While sitting at Nkwinda's, a man behind the court hedge- 
wall said, with great apparent glee, that an Arab slaving par- 
ty on the other side of the confluence of the Shire and Lake 
were "giving readily two fathoms of calico for a boy, and 
two and a half for a girl ; never saw trade so brisk — no hag- 
gling at all." This party was purchasing for the supply of 
the ocean slave-trade. One of the evils of this traffic is that 
it profits by every calamity that happens in a country. The 
slave-trader naturally reaps advantage from every disorder, 
and though in the present case some lives may have been 



Chap. XXVII. A SLAVE GANG— THE GOKEE. 587 

saved that otherwise would have perished, as a rule he inten- 
sifies hatreds, and aggravates wars between the tribes, because 
the more they fight and vanquish each other the richer his 
harvest becomes. Where slaving and cattle are unknown 
the people live in peace. As we sat leaning against that 
hedge, and listened to the harangue of the slave-trader's agent, 
it glanced across our mind that this was a terrible world ; the 
best in it unable, from conscious imperfections, to say to the 
worst " Stand by ! for I am holier than thou." The slave- 
trader, imbued, no doubt, with certain kindly feelings, yet 
pursuing a calling which makes him a fair specimen of a hu- 
man fiend, stands grouped, with those by whom the slave- 
traders are employed, and with all the workers of sin and 
misery in more highly -favored lands, an awful picture to the 
All-seeing Eye. 

We arrived at Katosa's village on the 15th of October, and 
found about thirty young men and boys in slave-sticks. 
They had been bought by other agents of the Arab slavers, 
still on the east side of the Shire. They were resting in the 
village, and their owners soon removed them. The weight 
of the goree seemed very annoying when they tried to sleep. 
This taming instrument is kept on until the party has crossed 
several rivers, and all hope of escape has vanished from the 
captive's mind. 

On explaining to Katosa the injury he was doing in selling 
his people as slaves, he assured us that those whom we had 
seen belonged to the Arabs, and added that he had far too 
few people already. He said he had been living in peace at 
the Lakelet Pamalombe ; that the Ajawa or Machinga, under 
Kainka and Karamba, and a body of Babisa under Maonga, 
had induced him to ferry them over the Shire ; that they had 
lived for a considerable time at his expense, and at last stole 



588 CONDUCT OF THE AJAWA. Chap. XXVII. 

his sheep, which induced him to make his escape to the place 
where he now dwelt, and in this flight he had lost many of 
his people. His account of the usual conduct of the Ajawa 
quite agrees with what these people have narrated themselves, 
and gives but a low idea of their moral tone. They have re- 
peatedly broken all the laws of hospitality by living for 
months on the bounty of the Manganja, and then, by a sudden 
uprising, overcoming their hosts, and killing or chasing them 
out of their inheritances. The secret of their success is the 
possession of fire-arms. There were several of these Ajawa 
here again, and on our arrival they proposed to Katosa that 
they should leave ; but he replied that they need not be afraid 
of us. They had red beads strung so thickly on their hair 
that at a little distance they appeared to have on red caps. 
It is curious that the taste for red hair should be so general 
among the Africans here and farther north; in the south, 
black mica, called jSebilo, and even soot, are used to deepen 
the color of the hair ; here many smear the head with red 
ochre, others plait the inner bark of a tree stained red into 
it ; and a red powder called Muhuru is employed, which some 
say is obtained from the ground, and others from the roots 
of a tree. 

It having been doubted whether sugar-cane is indigenous 
to this country or not, we employed Katosa to procure the 
two varieties commonly cultivated, with the intention of con- 
veying them to Johanna. One is yellow, and the other, like 
what we observed in the Barotse Valley, is variegated with 
dark red and yellow patches, or all red. We have seen it 
"arrow" or blossom. Bamboos also run to seed, and the 
people are said to use the seed as food. The sugar-cane has 
native names, which would lead us to believe it to be indig- 
enous. Here it is called Zimbi, farther south Mesari, and 



Chap. XXVII. KATOSA'S VILLAGE. 589 

in the centre of the country Meshuati. Any thing introduced 
in recent times, as maize, superior cotton, or cassava, has a 
name implying its foreign origin. 

As Katosa was very bountiful, and seemed, from calling 
Dr. Livingstone his good spirit, to have given us his confi- 
dence, a present was made him of a marine officer's coat and 
epaulets, which was sent by the officers of H.M.S. Lyra, under 
Captain Oldfield, to the chief who had seized and delivered 
up to justice the murderers of the late Dr. Eoscher. We car- 
ried it up the Eovuma, intending to present it, should we be 
fortunate enough to meet that chief; but, at the point where 
we were obliged to turn back, we could hear nothing about 
him. Dr. Eoscher, having gone with an Arab party, was not 
recognized among the people as a -European, and we found it 
rather an awkward thing to inquire about one who had been 
murdered. Those who knew any thing about the matter 
were naturally suspicious that our inquiries implied blood- 
relationship, and its attendant blood-feud ; so, after unavail- 
ing search, we brought the present here, and, it being unlike- 
ly that we should soon go to the east side of the Lake, after 
a full explanation of the reasons why we were carrying this 
present, we gave it to Katosa, and believe that, if any future 
traveler should require his aid, he would cheerfully render it 
to the utmost of his ability. 

Katosa's village was embowered among gigantic trees of 
fine timber : several caflaceous bushes, with berries closely 
resembling those of the common coffee, grew near, but no use 
had ever been made of them. There are several cinchonace- 
ous trees also in the country ; and some of the wild fruits are 
so good as to cause a feeling of regret that they have not 
been improved by cultivation, or whatever else brought ours 
to their present perfection. Katosa lamented that this local- 



590 DEZA— THE GOA VALLEY. Chap. XXVII. 

ity was so inferior to his former place at Pamalombe ; there 
he had maize at the different stages of growth throughout the 
year. To us, however, he seemed, by digging holes, and tak- 
ing advantage of the moisture beneath, to have succeeded 
pretty well in raising crops at this the driest time. The Ma- 
kololo remarked that "here the maize had no season," mean- 
ing that the whole year was proper for its growth and ripen- 
ing. By irrigation, a succession of crops of grain might be 
raised any where within the south intertropical region of 
Africa, 

When we were with Motunda, on the 20th of October, he 
told us frankly that all the native provisions were hidden in 
Kirk's range, and his village being the last place where a sup- 
ply of grain could be purchased before we reached the ship, 
we waited till he had sent to his hidden stores. The upland 
country, beyond the mountains now on our right, is called 
Deza, and is inhabited by Maravi, who are only another tribe 
of Manganja. The paramount chief is called Kabambe, and 
he, having never been visited by war, lives in peace and plen- 
ty. Goats and sheep thrive ; and Nyango, the chieftainess 
farther to the south, has herds of horned cattle. The coun- 
try, being elevated, is said to be cold, and there are large 
grassy plains on it which are destitute of trees. The Maravi 
are reported to be brave, and good marksmen with the bow ; 
but, throughout all the country we have traversed, guns are 
enabling the trading tribes to overcome the agricultural and 
manufacturing classes. 

In marching up the Groa or Gova Valley the haze had gone, 
and the mountains were all quite clear. In the lines of dark 
green massive trees along the water-courses sang swarms of 
cicadas, with a stridulous chorus, which at spots resembled the 
noise of fifty frying-pans in active operation. A heavy show- 



Chap. XXVII. BANDA— THE LESUNGWE. 591 

er of rain, which had fallen some time before, had cleared the 
atmosphere and called forth insect life. 

On the ascent at the end of the valley just opposite Mount 
Mvai, we looked back for a moment to impress the beauties 
of the grand vale on our memory. The heat of the sun was 
now excessive, and Masiko, thinking that it was overpower- 
ing, proposed to send forward to the ship and get a hammock, 
in which to carry any one who might knock up. He was 
truly kind and considerate. Dr. Livingstone having fallen 
asleep after a fatiguing march, a hole in the roof of the hut 
he was in allowed the sun to beat on his head, and caused a 
splitting headache and deafness : while he was nearly insen- 
sible, he felt Masiko repeatedly lift him back to the bed off 
which he had rolled, and cover him up. 

On the 24th we were again in Banda, at the village of Cha- 
sundu, and could now see clearly the hot valley in which the 
Shire flows, and the mountains of the Manganja beyond to 
our southeast. Instead of following the road by which we 
had come, we resolved to go south along the Lesungwe, which 
rises at Zunje, a peak on the same ridge as Mvai, and a part 
of Kirk's range, which bounds the country of the Maravi on 
our west. This is about the limit of the beat of the Portu- 
guese native traders, and it is but recently that, following our 
footsteps, they have come so far. It is not likely that their 
enterprise will lead them farther north, for Chasundu inform- 
ed us that the Babisa undersell the agents from Tette. He 
had tried to deal with the latter when they first came, but 
they offered only ten fathoms of calico for a tusk, for which 
the Babisa gave him twenty fathoms and a little powder. 
Ivory was brought to us for sale again and again, and, as far 
as we could judge, the price expected would be about one 
yard of calico per pound, or possibly more, for there is no 



592 GUINEA-FOWL— INTENSE HEAT. Chap. XXVII. 

scale of prices known. The rule seems to be that buyer and 

seller shall spend a good deal of time in trying to cheat each 

other before coming to any conclusion over a bargain. 

We found the Lesungwe a fine stream near its source, and 

about forty feet wide and knee-deep when joined by the Le- 

kudzi, which comes down from the Maravi country. The 

« 
banks and slopes down to the stream are dry and hard. The 

soil is largely mixed with disintegrated gneiss and mica schist, 
and is not so fertile as is common in this country. The gneiss 
and mica schist have been given their present dip away from 
the chain, or eastward, by the granitic masses which form 
Kirk's range. The people had been subjected to the slave- 
trading scourge of the Ajawa and Tette dealers. Indeed, a 
party of the latter was actually on the Lesungwe at this very 
time, headed by a white Portuguese — probably one of the 
convict soldiers of the governor. 

Guinea -fowl abounded, but no grain could be purchased, 
for the people had cultivated only the holmes along the banks 
with maize and pumpkins. Time enough had not elapsed 
since the slave-trader's invasion, and destruction of their 
stores, for them to raise crops of grain on the adjacent lands. 
To deal with them for a few heads of maize was the hungry 
bargaining with the famished, so we hastened on southward 
as fast as the excessive heat would allow us. It was impos- 
sible to march in the middle of the day, the heat was so in- 
tolerable, and we could not go on at night, because, if we had 
chanced to meet any of the inhabitants, we should have been 
taken for marauders. In making a detour one day in search 
of buffaloes or Guinea-fowls, in company with Masego, we 
came upon some women working in their maize -gardens. 
They drew water for us, and spoke to us cheerily as we sat 
under a tree. One of their husbands soon came running up 



Chap. XXVII. WE REACH THE MUKURU-MADSE. 593 

in alarm, and made a great demonstration of fighting. It was 
amusing to notice the effect of Masego's quiet chaff on our 
pugnacious visitor, who took up a defensible position on a 
slope some fifty yards off, while we rested in the shade. " The 
women," said Masego, " had understood our civil petition for 
water perfectly ; they showed no fear of peaceable men ; we 
asked water from them because we had no vessel to draw 
with, and they had ; but, if he insisted on fighting, he had 
better call all his friends and come on ; it was daylight, and 
all would see who was the coward and who was not." The 
arrow was first taken from the bow-string and put alongside 
the bow, then it was placed in the quiver, and, though he con- 
tinued talking and justifying his alarm, he listened, sat down, 
followed us at a distance, and, uninvited, eventually proved 
himself very useful as a guide. He afterward explained that 
he had been smoking hemp, and 'had been excited to this 
mad sort of conduct. 

We had now thunder every afternoon ; but, while occa- 
sional showers seemed to fall at different parts, none fell on 
us. The air was deliciously clear, and revealed all the land- 
scape covered every where with forest, and bounded by beau- 
tiful mountains. On the 31st of October we reached the 
Mukuru-Madse, after having traveled 660 geographical miles, 
or 760 English miles in a straight line. This was accom- 
plished in fifty-five traveling days, twelve miles per diem on 
an average. If the numerous bendings and windings, and 
ups and downs of the paths could have been measured too, 
the distance would have been found at least fifteen miles a 
day. A pedometer showed more, but in coming back from 
one short trip we found that the instrument varied so much 
that we did not use it again. A very good chronometer was 

employed to measure the differences of longitude. It was 

Pp 



594 WET CLOTHES AND FEVER. ' Chap. XXVII. 

carried in a box of clothing, on the head of a man of steady 
gait. In order to secure a chronometer being of any use, no 
dependence ought to be placed on its rate when stationary. 
Its traveling rate must be ascertained by taking a series of 
altitudes of the sun or stars at certain spots in the outward 
journey, and a second series of observations must be made at 
the same stations in the return journey. By this means the 
exact traveling rate can be found. The same plan should be 
followed in a boat ; for, if this or some similar precaution be 
not taken, a chronometer, when carried, is of little value in 
measuring distances. This will be evident when it is men- 
tioned that the chronometer we used, when at the ship, had 
the rate —11 ; in traveling, +1 9 - daily, which would amount 
to a daily error of three miles. 

The night we slept at the Mukuru-Madse it thundered 
heavily, but, as this had been the case every afternoon, and 
no rain had followed, we erected no shelter, but during this 
night a pouring rain came on. When very tired, a man feels 
determined to sleep in spite of every thing, and the sound of 
dropping water is said to be conducive to slumber, but that 
does not refer to an African storm. If, when half asleep, in 
spite of a heavy shower on the back of the head, he uncon- 
sciously turns on his side, the drops from the branches make 
such capital shots into his ear that the brain rings again. 

We were off next morning, the 1st of November, as soon 
as the day dawned. In walking about seven miles to the 
ship, our clothes were thoroughly dried by the hot sun, and 
an attack of fever followed. We relate this little incident 
to point out the almost certain consequence of getting wet 
in this climate, and allowing the clothes to dry on the person. 
Even if we walk in the mornings when the dew is on the 
grass, and only get our feet and legs wet, a very uneasy feel- 



Chap. XXVII. WEARING WET CLOTHES DANGEROUS. 595 

ing and partial fever, with pains in the limbs, ensue, and con- 
tinue till the march onward bathes them in perspiration. 
Had Bishop Mackenzie been aware of this, which, before ex- 
perience alone had taught us, entailed many a severe lesson, 
we know no earthly reason why his valuable life might not 
have been spared. The difference between getting the clothes 
soaked in England and in Africa is this : in the cold climate 
the patient is compelled, or, at any rate, warned by discom- 
fort to resort at once to a change of raiment, while in Africa 
it is cooling and rather pleasant to allow the clothes to dry 
on the person. A missionary, in proportion as he possesses 
an athletic frame, hardened by manly exercises, in addition 
to his other qualifications, will excel him who is not favored 
with such bodily endowments ; but in a hot climate efficiency 
mainly depends on husbanding the resources. He must 
never forget that, in the tropics, he is an exotic plant. 



596 CONDUCT OF THE AJAWA. Chap. XXVIII. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Gratifying Confidence of Ajawa. — Annual Kest of tropical Trees. — Eise in the 
Shire insufficient. — Bishop Mackenzie's Successor. — Unfulfilled Hopes. — 
What a Missionary ought to be. — Abandonment of Mission unnecessary. — 
Success of West Coast Missions. — January 19th, the Shire in Flood. — Leave 
Chibisa's. — Delayed. — Beach Morambala on the 2d of February. — Effluvium 
from the Water. — Its Effects. — Take on Board Orphans and Widows. — The 
Zambesi in Flood. — Islands in the Zambesi. — Formation of the Delta. — 
Death of Mariano. — Very moderate Exports. — Taken in Tow. — Heavy Gale. 
— Behavior of the "Lady of the Lake." — Promptitude and Skill of Captain 
Chapman, of H.M.S. Ariel. — Close packing of live Cargoes perhaps neces- 
sary. — The Pioneer takes rescued Orphans and Widows with Mr. Waller to 
the Cape. — Caboceira. — M. Soares. — New Governor of Mozambique. — New 
Species of Pedalia. — On the 16th of April we reach Zanzibar. — Hospitality 
of Foreigners and of our own Countrymen. — On the 30th of April we leave 
Zanzibar on board the Lady Nyassa for Bombay. — African Sailors. — Arrival 
at Bombay. 

We were delighted and thankful to find all those left at 
the ship in good health, and that from the employments in 
which they had been occupied they had suffered less from 
fever than usual during our absence. The steward, after hav- 
ing performed his part in the march right bravely, rejoined 
his comrades stronger than he had ever been before. 

An Ajawa chief, named Kapeni, had so much confidence in 
the English name that he, with most of his people, visited the 
ship, and asserted that nothing would give his countrymen 
greater pleasure than to receive the associates of Bishop Mac- 
kenzie as their teachers. This declaration, coupled with the 
subsequent conduct of the Ajawa, was very gratifying, inas- 
much as it was clear that no umbrage had been taken at the 
check which the bishop had given to their slaving ; their con- 
sciences had told them that the course he had pursued was 
right. 



Chap. XXVIII. EFFECT OF THE RAINS. 597 

When we returned, the contrast between the vegetation 
about Muazi's and that near the ship was very striking. We 
had come so quickly down, that, while on the plateau, in lati- 
tude 12° S., the young leaves had in many cases passed from 
the pink or other color they have on first coming out to the 
light fresh green which succeeds it, here, on the borders of 
16° S.j or from 150 to 180 miles distant, the trees were still 
bare, the gray color of the bark predominating over every 
other hue. The trees in the tropics here have a very well 
marked annual rest. On the Eovuma even, which is only 
about ten degrees from the equator, in September the slopes 
up from the river some sixty miles inland were of a light 
ashy-gray color ; and on ascending them, we found that the 
majority of the trees were without leaves; those of the bam- 
boo even lay crisp and crumpled on the ground. As the sun 
is usually hot by day, even in the winter, this withering pro- 
cess may be owing to the cool nights; Africa differing so 
much from Central India in the fact that, in Africa, however 
hot the day may be, the air generally cools down sufficiently 
by the early morning watches to render a covering, or even 
a blanket, agreeable. 

The first fortnight after our return to the ship was employ- 
ed in the delightful process of resting, to appreciate which a 
man must have gone through great exertions. In our case 
the muscles of the limbs were as hard as boards, and not an 
ounce of fat existed on any part of the body. We now had 
frequent showers ; but, these being only the earlier rains, the 
result on the rise of the river was but a few inches. The ef- 
fect of these rains on the surrounding scenery was beautiful 
in the extreme. All trace of the dry season was soon oblit- 
erated, and hills and mountains, from base to summit, were 
covered with a mantle of living green. The sun passed us 



598 BISHOP MACKENZIE'S SUCCESSOR. Chap. XXVIII. 

on his way south without causing a flood, so all our hopes of 
a release were centred on his return toward the equator, 
when, as a rule, the waters of inundation are made to flow. 
Up to this time the rains descended simply to water the earth, 
fill the pools, and make ready for the grand overflow, for 
which we had still to wait six weeks. It is of no use to con- 
ceal that we waited with much chagrin ; for, had we not been 
forced to return from the highlands west of Nyassa, we might 
have visited Lake Bemba; but unavailing regrets are poor 
employment for the mind, so we banished them to the best 
of our power. 

About the middle of December, 1863, we were informed 
that Bishop Mackenzie's successor, after spending a few 
months on the top of a mountain about as high as Ben Nevis 
in Scotland, at the mouth of the Shire, where there were few 
or no people to be taught, had determined to leave the coun- 
try. This unfortunate decision was communicated to us at 
the same time that six of the boys reared by Bishop Macken- 
zie were sent back into heathenism. The boys were taken 
to a place about seven miles from the ship, but immediately 
found their way up to us, lamenting that they had no longer 
that bishop who had a heart, and who was more than a fa- 
ther to them. We told them that if they wished to remain 
in the country they had better so arrange at once, for we were 
soon to leave. The sequel will show their choice. 

As soon as the death of Bishop Mackenzie was known at 
the Cape, Dr. Gray, the excellent bishop there, proceeded at 
once to England, with a view of securing an early appoint- 
ment of another head to the Mission, which in its origin owed 
so much to his zeal for the spread of the Gospel among the 
heathen, and whose interests he had continually at heart. 
About the middle of 1862 we heard that Dr. Grav's efforts 



Chap. XXVIII. WHAT A MISSIONARY SHOULD BE. 599 

had been successful, and that another clergyman would soon 
take the place of our departed friend. This pleasing intelli- 
gence was exceedingly cheering to the missionaries, and grat- 
ifying also to the members of the Expedition. About the 
beginning of 1863 the new bishop arrived at the mouth of the 
river in a man-of-war, and, after some delay, proceeded in- 
land. The Bishop of the Cape had taken a voyage home, at 
considerable inconvenience to himself, for the sole object of 
promoting this Mission to the heathen, and it was somehow 
expected that the man he would secure would be an image 
of himself; and we must say, that whatever others, from the 
representations that have gone abroad, may think of his char- 
acter, we invariably found Dr. Gray to be a true, warm-heart- 
ed promoter of the welfare of his fellow-men — a man whose 
courage and zeal have provoked very many to good works. 

It was hoped that the presence of a new head to the Mis- 
sion would infuse new energy and life into the small band 
of missionaries, whose ranks had been thinned by death, and 
who, though discouraged by the disasters which the slave war 
and famine had induced, and also dispirited by the depress- 
ing influences of a low and unhealthy position in the swampy 
Shire Valley, were yet bravely holding out till the much- 
needed moral and material aid should arrive. 

These expectations, we regret to say, were not fulfilled. 
We would here be understood as expressing only a general 
opinion. The qualities required in a missionary leader are 
not of the common kind. He ought to have physical and 
moral courage of the highest order, and a considerable amount 
of cultivation and energy, balanced by patient determination ; 
and above all these are necessary a calm Christian zeal, and 
anxiety for the main spiritual results of the work. We re- 
peat, that we are expressing no opinion about the qualifica- 



600 MISSIONS ON THE WEST COAST. Chap. XXVIII. 

tion of any individual, but we assert that not every one has 
this rare combination of power ; and that a man who may be 
quite in his natural sphere in a quiet round of common du- 
ties as the minister of a town or rural parish in England, may 
be very much out of it as a missionary in Central Africa. 

We believe that we are uttering the sentiments of many 
devout members of different sections of Christians when we 
say it was a pity that the Mission of the Universities was 
abandoned. The ground had been consecrated in the truest 
sense by the lives of those brave men who first occupied it. 
In bare justice to Bishop Mackenzie, who was the first to fall, 
it must be said, that the repudiation of all he had done, and 
the sudden abandonment of all that had cost so much life and 
money to secure, was a serious line of conduct for one so un- 
versed in missionary operations as his successor to inaugurate. 
It would have been no more than fair that Bishop Tozer, be- 
fore winding up the affairs of the Mission, should actually 
have examined the highlands of the Upper Shire ; he would 
thus have gratified the associates of his predecessor, who be- 
lieved that the highlands had never had a fair trial, and he 
would have gained from personal observation a more accu- 
rate knowledge of the country and the people than he could 
possibly have become possessed of by information gathered 
chiefly on the coast. "With this examination, rather than 
with a stay .of a few months on the humid, dripping top of 
misty Morambala, we should have felt much more satisfied. 

To those who have not paid much attention to the labors 
of different bodies of Christians, it may be mentioned that, be- 
fore success appeared at the Mission -stations on the West 
Coast, upward of forty missionaries had succumbed to the cli- 
mate. Let it be said, if you will, that the societies and the 
men were alike unwise to sacrifice so much valuable life. 



Chap. XXVIII. RISING OF THE SHIRE. 601 

These may be proofs of folly to some, but to others they are 
telling evidence that our religion has lost none of its pristine 
power. Nothing, in our opinion, is wanting to complete the 
title of many of these men to take rank with the saints and 
martyrs of primitive times. More experience of the climate 
has since greatly diminished the mortality, and in 1861 there 
were, on the West Coast, one hundred and ten principal Mis- 
sion-stations, thirteen thousand scholars in the schools, and 
nineteen thousand members in the churches. 

Bishop Mackenzie had in a short time gained the first step 
— he had secured the confidence of the people. This step it 
often takes several years to attain ; and we can not but regret 
that subsequently the Mission of the Universities, when con- 
trasted with, others, should appear to so much disadvantage. 
In fact, though representing all that is brave, and good, and 
manly in the chief seats of English learning, the Mission, in 
fleeing from Marambala to an island in the Indian Ocean, act- 
ed as St. Augustine would have done had he located himself 
on one of the Channel Islands when sent to christianize the 
natives of Central England. This is, we believe, the first case 
of a Protestant Mission having been abandoned without be- 
ing driven away. 

In January, 1864, the natives all confidently asserted that 
at next full moon the river would have its great and perma- 
nent flood. It had several times risen as much as a foot, but 
fell again as suddenly. It was curious that their observation 
coincided exactly with ours, that the flood of inundation hap- 
pens when the sun comes overhead on his way back to the 
equator. We mention this more minutely because, from the 
observation of several years, we believe that in this way the 
inundation of the Nile is to be explained. On the 19th the 
Shire suddenly rose several feet, and we started at once ; and 



602 EFFLUVIUM FROM THE MARSH. Chap. XXVIII. 

stopping only for a short time at Chibisa's to bid adieu to the 
Ajawa and Makololo, who had been extremely useful to us 
of late in supplying maize and fresh provisions, we hastened 
on our way to the ocean. In order to keep steerage way on 
the Pioneer, we had to go quicker than the stream, and unfor- 
tunately carried away her rudder in passing suddenly round 
a bank. The delay required for the repairs prevented our 
reaching Morambala till the 2d of February. 

The flood-water ran into a marsh some miles above the 
mountain, and became as black as ink ; and when it returned 
again to the river, emitted so strong an effluvium of sulphu- 
reted hydrogen that one could not forget for an instant that 
the air was most offensive. The natives said this stench did 
not produce disease. We spent one night in it, and suffered 
no ill effects, though we fully expected an attack of fever. 
Next morning every particle of white paint on both ships 
was so deeply blackened that it could not be cleaned b.y 
scrubbing with soap and water. The brass was all turned to 
a bronze color, and even the iron and ropes had taken a new 
tint. This is an additional proof that malaria and offensive 
effluvia are not always companions. We did not suffer more 
from fever in the mangrove swamps, where we inhaled so 
much of the heavy, mousey smell that it was distinguishable 
in the odor of our shirts and flannels, than we did elsewhere. 

We tarried in the foul and blackening emanations from 
the marsh because we had agreed to receive on board about 
thirty poor orphan boys and girls, and a few helpless widows 
whom Bishop Mackenzie had attached to his Mission. All 
who were able to support themselves had been encouraged 
by the missionaries to do so by cultivating the ground, and 
they now formed a little free community. But the boys and 
girls, who were only from seven to twelve years of age, and 



Chap. XXVIII. THE ZAMBESI IN FLOOD. 603 

orphans without any one to help them, could not be aban- 
doned without bringing odium on the English name. The 
effect of an outcry by some persons in England, who knew 
nothing of the circumstances in which Bishop Mackenzie 
was placed, and who certainly had not given up their own 
right of appeal to the sword of the magistrate, was, that the 
new head of the Mission had gone to extremes in the oppo- 
site direction from his predecessor, not even protesting against 
the one monstrous evil of the country, the slave-trade. The 
most heartless axiom that ever issued from a missionary's 
mouth, " One black face is as good as another to me," was 
never uttered by Mackenzie, nor did it find a chord of sym- 
pathy in true English hearts. We believed that we ought 
to leave the English name in the same good repute among 
the natives that we had found it ; and in removing the poor 
creatures, who had lived with Mackenzie as children with a 
father, to a land where the education he began would be 
completed, we had the aid and sympathy of the best of the 
Portuguese, and of the whole native population. The differ- 
ence between shipping slaves and receiving these free or- 
phans struck us as they came on board. As soon as per- 
mission to embark was given, the rush into the boat nearly 
swamped her; their eagerness to be safe on the Pioneer's 
deck had to be repressed. 

Bishop Tozer had already left for Quillimane when we 
took these people and the last of the Universities' Missiona- 
ries on board and proceeded to the Zambesi. It was in high 
flood. We have always spoken of this river as if at its low- 
est, for fear lest we should convey an exaggerated impression 
of its capabilities for navigation. Instead of from five to fif- 
teen feet, it was now from fifteen to thirty feet, or more, deep. 
All the sand-banks and many of the islands had disappeared, 



604 ISLANDS IN THE ZAMBESI. Chap. XXVIII. 

and before us rolled a river capable, as one of our naval 
friends thought, of carrying a gun-boat. Some of the sandy 
islands are annually swept away, and the quantities of sand 
carried down are prodigious. 

The process by which a delta, extending eighty or one 
hundred miles from the sea, has been formed may be seen 
going on at the present day — the coarser particles of sand are 
driven out into the ocean, just in the same way as we see 
they are over banks in the beds of torrents. The finer por- 
tions are caught by the returning tide, and, accumulating by 
successive ebbs and flows, become, with the decaying vegeta- 
tion, arrested by the mangrove roots. The influence of the 
tide in bringing back the finer particles gives the sea near 
the mouth of the Zambesi a clean and sandy bottom. This 
process has been going on for ages, and, as the delta has en- 
larged eastward, the river has always kept a channel for it- 
self behind. Wherever we see an island all sand, or with 
only one layer of mud in it, we know it is one of recent for- 
mation, and that it may be swept away at any time by a 
flood ; while those islands which are all of mud are the more 
ancient, having in fact existed ever since the time when the 
ebbing and flowing tides originally formed them as parts of 
the delta. This mud resists the action of the river wonder- 
fully. It is a kind of clay, on which the eroding power of 
water has little effect. "Were maps made, showing which 
banks and which islands are liable to erosion, it would go far 
to settle where the annual change of the channel would take 
place; and, were a few stakes driven in year by year to 
guide the water in its course, the river might be made of con- 
siderable commercial value in the hands of any energetic Eu- 
ropean nation. No canal or railway would ever be thought 
of for this part of Africa. A few improvements would make 



Chap. XXVIII. DEATH OF MARIANO. 605 

the Zambesi a ready means of transit for all the trade that, 
with a population thinned by Portuguese slaving, will ever 
be developed in our day. Here there is no instance on rec- 
ord of the natives flocking in thousands to the colony, as 
they did at Natal, and even to the Arabs on Lake Nyassa. 
This keeping aloof renders it unlikely that in Portuguese 
hands the Zambesi will ever be of any more value to the 
world than it has been. 

Mariano died from the effects of debauchery while we were 
coming down the Shire. His sad career affords another illus- 
tration of that system which, whether in African or half Eu- 
ropean hands, obstructs the prosperity of this country. We 
must say that, notwithstanding all the mismanagement and 
injustice with which the French and English stand chargea- 
ble in their treatment of barbarians, the commercial results 
of their enterprises are usually appreciable ; while the total 
exports from the port of Quillimane, which is the trade out- 
let of the Zambesi, yield an annual revenue of about half the 
amount of the governor's salary ! 

After a hurried visit to Senna, in order to settle with Major 
Sicard and Senhor Ferrao for supplies we had drawn thence 
after the depopulation of the Shire, we proceeded down to 
the Zambesi's mouth, and were fortunate in meeting, on the 
13th of February, with H.M.S. Orestes. She was joined next 
day by H.M.S. Ariel. The Orestes took the Pioneer, and 
the Ariel the Lady Nyassa in tow, for Mozambique. On the 
16th a circular storm proved the sea-going qualities of the 
"Lady of the Lake," for on this day a hurricane struck the 
Ariel, and drove her nearly backward at a rate of six knots. 
The towing hawser wound round her screw and stopped her 
engines. No sooner had she recovered from this shock than 
she was again taken aback on the other tack, and driven 



606 HEAVY GALE. Chap. XXVIII. 

stem on toward the Lady Nyassa's broadside. We who were 
on board the little vessel saw no chance of escape unless the 
crew of the Ariel should think of heaving ropes when the 
big ship went over us ; but she glided past our bow, and we 
breathed freely again. We had now an opportunity of wit- 
nessing man-of-war seamanship. Captain Chapman, though 
his engines were disabled, did not think of abandoning us in 
the heavy gale, but crossed the bows of the Lady Nyassa 
again and again, dropping a cask with a line by which to 
give us another hawser. We might never have picked it up 
had not a Krooman jumped overboard and fastened a second 
line to the cask ; and then we drew the hawser on board, and 
were again in tow. During the whole time of the hurricane 
the little vessel behaved admirably, and never shipped a sin- 
gle green sea. When the Ariel pitched forward we could 
see a large part of her bottom, and when her stern went 
down we could see all her deck. A boat hung at her stern 
davits was stove in by the waves. The officers on board the 
Ariel thought that it was all over with us: we imagined that 
they were suffering more than we were. Nautical men may 
suppose that this was a serious storm only to landsmen ; but 
the Orestes, which was once in sight, and at another time 
forty miles off during the same gale, split eighteen sails ; and 
the Pioneer had to be lightened of parts of a sugar-mill she 
was carrying; her round-house was washed away, and the 
cabin was frequently knee-deep in water. When the Orestes 
came into Mozambique Harbor nine days after our arrival 
there, our vessel, not being anchored close to the Ariel, for 
we had run in under the lee of the fort, led to the surmise on 
board the Orestes that we had gone to the bottom. Captain 
Chapman and his officers pronounced the Lady Nyassa to be 
the finest little sea-boat they had ever seen. She certainly 



Chap. XXVIII. SKILLFUL SEAMANSHIP— SEA-SICKNESS. 607 

was a contrast to the Ma-Kobert, and did great credit to her 
builders, Tod and Macgregor, of Glasgow. We can but re- 
gret that she was not employed on the Lake after which she 
was named, and for which she was intended and was so well 
adapted. 

What struck us most during the trip from the Zambesi to 
Mozambique was the admirable way in which Captain Chap- 
man handled the Ariel in the heavy sea of the hurricane; the 
promptitude and skill with which, when we had broken three 
hawsers, others were passed to us by the rapid evolutions of 
a big ship round a little one ; and the ready appliance of 
means shown in cutting the hawser off the screw nine feet 
under water with long chisels made for the occasion, a task 
which it took three days to accomplish. Captain Chapman 
very kindly invited us on board the Ariel, and we accepted 
his hospitality after the weather had moderated. 

The little vessel was hauled through and against the huge 
seas with such force that two hawsers measuring eleven inch- 
es each in circumference parted. Many of the blows we re- 
ceived from the billows made every plate quiver from stem 
to stern, and the motion was so quick that we had to hold on 
continually to avoid being tossed from one side to the other, 
or into the sea. Ten of the late bishop's flock whom we had 
on board became so sick and helpless that, do what we could 
to aid them, they were so very much in the way that the idea 
broke in upon us that the close packing resorted to by slav- 
ers is one of the necessities of the traffic. If this is so, it 
would account for the fact that even when the trade was le- 
gal the same injurious custom was common, if not universal. 
If, instead of ten such passengers, we had been carrying two 
hundred, with the wind driving the rain and spray, as by 
night it did, nearly as hard as hail against our faces, and noth- 



608 CABOQEIKA— ME. SOAEES. Chap. XXVIII. 

ing whatever to be seen to windward but the occasional gleam 
of the crest of a wave, and no sound heard save the whistling 
of the storm through the rigging, it would have been abso- 
lutely necessary for the working of the ship and safety of the 
whole that the live cargo should all have been stowed down 
below, whatever might have been the consequences. 

Having delivered the Pioneer over to the Navy, she was 
towed down to the Cape by Captain Forsyth of the Valorous, 
and, after examination, it was declared that with repairs to 
the amount of £300 she would be as serviceable as ever. 
Those of the bishop's flock whom we had on board were kind- 
ly allowed a passage to the Cape. The boys went in the 
Orestes, and we are glad of the opportunity to record our 
heartfelt thanks to Captains Forsyth, Gardner, and Chapman 
for rendering us, at various times, every aid in their power. 
Mr. "Waller went in the Pioneer, and continued his generous 
services to all connected with the Mission, whether white or 
black, till they were no longer needed ; and we must say that 
his conduct to them throughout was truly noble, and worthy 
of the highest praise. 

After beaching the Lady Kyassa at Caboceira, opposite the 
house of a Portuguese gentleman well known to all English- 
men, Joao da Costa Soares, we put in brine cocks, and cleaned 
and painted her bottom. Mr. Soares appeared to us to have 
been very much vilified in a publication in England a few 
years ago ; our experience proved him to be extremely kind 
and obliging. All the members of the Expedition who pass- 
ed Mozambique were unanimous in extolling his generosity, 
and, from the general testimony of English visitors in his fa- 
vor, we very much regret that his character was so grievous- 
ly misrepresented. To the authorities at Mozambique our 
thanks are also due for obliging accommodation ; and though 



Chap. XXVIII. A PEDALIA— WE REACH ZANZIBAR 609 

we differ entirely from the Portuguese officials as to the light 
in which we regard the slave-trade, we trust our exposure of 
the system, in which, unfortunately, they are engaged, will 
not be understood as indicating any want of kindly feeling 
and good-will to them personally. Senhor Canto e Castro, 
who arrived at Mozambique two days after our departure to 
take the office of governor general, was well known to us in 
Angola. We lived two months in his house when he was 
commandant of Grolungo Alto, and, knowing him thorough- 
ly, believe that no better man could have been selected for 
the office. We trust that his good principles may enable him 
to withstand the temptations of his position ; but we should 
be sorry to have ours tried in a den of slave-traders with the 
miserable pittance he receives for his support. 

While at Mozambique, a species of Pedalia, called by Mr. 
Soares Dadeleira, and by the natives — from its resemblance 
to Gerzilin, or sesamum — " wild sesamum," was shown to us, 
and is said to be well known among native nurses as a very 
gentle and tasteless aperient for children. A few leaves of it 
are stirred in a cup of cold water for eight or nine seconds, 
and a couple of teaspoonfuls of the liquid given as a dose. 
The leaves form a sort of mucilage in the water by longer 
stirring, which is said to have diuretic properties besides. 

On the 16th of April we steamed out from Mozambique, 
and, the currents being in our favor, in a week reached Zan- 
zibar. Here we experienced much hospitality from our coun- 
trymen, and especially from Dr. Seward, then acting consul 
and political agent for Colonel Playfair. A peculiarity in all 
our countrymen whom we have met abroad is the attention 
they pay to the comfort of the stranger. We can not com- 
plain of a want of hospitality in other nations, but we have to 
wait till the time of the usual meal comes round ; and, in the 

QQ 



610 START FOR BOxMBAY— OUR CREW. Chap. XXVIII. 

interval, our Dutch and other friends used to put a string of 
questions : " Where do you come from ? Where are you 
bound for ? What do you mean to do ? Are you married ? 
If not, why not?" and many more of the same kind ; but, so 
far as our experience goes, the Englishman's first inquiries 
were, " Have you breakfasted ? What will you take ? Have 
some cold meat?" All were kind; but, from being English 
ourselves, we preferred our own countrymen's way of show- 
ing hospitality. 

Dr. Seward was very doubtful if we could reach Bombay 
before what is called the break of the monsoon took place. 
This break occurs usually between the end of May and the 
12th of June. The wind still blows from Africa to India, but 
with so much violence, and with such a murky atmosphere, 
that few or no observations for position can be taken. We 
were, however, at the time very anxious to dispose of the 
Lady Nyassa, and, the only market we could reach being 
Bombay, we resolved to run the risk of getting there before 
the stormy period commenced ; and, after taking fourteen 
tons of coal on board, we started on the 30th of April from 
Zanzibar. 

Our complement consisted of seven native Zambesians, two 
bo}^s, and four Europeans ; namely, one stoker, one sailor, one 
carpenter, whose names have been already mentioned, and 
Dr. Livingstone, as navigator. The Lady Nyassa had shown 
herself to be a good sea-boat. The natives had proved them- 
selves capital sailors, though before volunteering not one of 
them had ever seen the sea. They were not picked men, 
but, on paying a dozen whom we had in our employment for 
fifteen months, they were taken at random from several hund- 
reds who offered to accompany us. Their wages were ten 
shillings per mensem ; and it was curious to observe that, so 



Chap. XXVIII. AFEICAN SAILORS. 611 

eager were they to do their duty, only one of them lay down 
from sea-sickness during the whole voyage. They took in 
and set sail very cleverly in a short time, and would climb 
out along a boom, reeve a rope through the block, and come 
back with the rope in their teeth, though at each lurch the 
performer was dipped in the sea. The sailor and carpenter, 
though anxious to do their utmost, had a week's severe ill- 
ness each, and were unfit for duty. 

It is pleasant enough to take the wheel for an hour or two, 
or even for a watch, but when it comes to be for every alter- 
nate four hours, it is utterly wearisome. "We set our black 
men to steer, showing them which arm of the compass needle 
was to be kept toward the vessel's head, and soon three of 
them could manage very well, and they only needed watch- 
ing. In going up the East Coast to take advantage of the 
current of one hundred miles a day, we would fain have gone 
into the Juba or Webbe Eiver, the mouth of which is only 
15' south of the line, but we were too short-handed. We 
passed up to about ten degrees north of the equator, and then 
steamed out from the coast. Here Maury's Wind Chart 
showed that the calm-belt had long been passed, but we were 
in it still ; and, instead of a current carrying us north, we had 
a contrary current which bore us every day four miles to the 
south. We steamed as long as we dared, knowing as we did 
that we must use the engines on the coast of India. 

After losing many days tossing on the silent sea, with in- 
numerable dolphins, flying -fish, and sharks around us, we 
had six days of strong breezes, then calms again tried our 
patience ; and the near approach of that period, "the break 
of the monsoon," in which it was believed no boat could 
live, made us sometimes think our epitaph would be, "Left 
Zanzibar on the 30th of April, 1864, and never more heard 



612 AERIVAL AT BOMBAY. Chap. XXVIII. 

of." At last, in the beginning of June, the' chronometers 
showed that we were near the Indian coast. The black men 
believed it was true because we told them it was so, but only 
began to dance with joy when they saw sea- weed and ser- 
pents floating past. These serpents are peculiar to these 
parts, and are mentioned as poisonous in the sailing direc- 
tions. We ventured to predict that we should see land next 
morning, and at midday the high coast hove in sight, won- 
derfully like Africa before the rains begin. Then a haze cov- 
ered all the land, and a heavy swell beat toward it. A rock 
was seen, and a latitude showed it to be the Choule Eock. 
Making that a fresh starting-point, we soon found the light- 
ship, and then the forest of masts loomed through the haze in 
Bombay Harbor. We had sailed over 2500 miles. The ves- 
sel was so small that no one noticed our arrival. 



Chap. XXIX. RECAPITULATION. 613 



CHAPTEK XXIX. 

CONCLUSION. 

Recapitulation of the Results of the Expedition. — Discovery of a Port, and a 
means of Transit to healthy Highlands. — Fertility of Soil. — Indigo. — Cotton. 
— Climate and Soil admirably suited for its Cultivation. — Large Cotton- 
bushes of the Interior. — Tobacco and Castor-oil Plants, and Sugar-cane. 
— Grasses. — Continuous Crops. — Eat Cattle. — Droughts. — Hard Woods 
common. — Timber scarce. — Sarsaparilla. — Calumba-root. — Eibrous and oil- 
yielding Plants and Trees. — Want of heart to describe discoveries in Africa. 
— Gloom of the Slave-trade. — Different Ways in which it is carried on. — 
Direct European agency in the Traffic. — Napoleon III. — u Engage System." 
— Slave-trade a barrier to all Progress. — Its Effects on Slave-owners' Coun- 
try. — Cause of the War in America. — Similar Effect of centuries of Barbar- 
ism on African and other Nations. — The African physically, his Lightheart- 
cdness. — Fitness for Servitude not attributable to Climate. — Form of Gov- 
ernment Patriarchal. — African Stagnation from the same cause as that of 
other Nations. — Man an unconscious Co-operator. — Guided by Wisdom not 
his own. — Is the greatest Power derivable from Science reserved for Chris- 
tians ? — The African's Capability for Christianity. — Kindness the best Road 
to the Heart. — Sierra Leone Missions. — Sunday at Sierra Leone. — State- 
ment of Captain Burton. — Statistics of Sierra Leone. — Continuance of Lord 
Palmerston's Policy needed. — Trade Returns. — Colonel Ord's Report. — In- 
fluences of Settlements. — Mortality on board the West Coast Squadron. — 
Treatment of Fever. — Missionary Societies on the West Coast. — Our Amer- 
ican Missionary Brethren. — Suggestions for a Solution of our Convict Ques- 
tion. — Colonel Ord on Settlements. 

It may be useful to recount the more important results 
enumerated in the foregoing pages. Among the first, the dis- 
covery of a port which could easily be made available for 
commercial purposes, and of the exact value of the Zambesi 
as a speedy means of transit to that interior of highlands, 
which in all probability will yet become the sphere of Euro- 
pean enterprise. The condition in which the river will be 
found at its lowest has been carefully ascertained, and stated 
in the same way as the depth of harbors usually is, namely, 
at low water. However much higher the waters of the Zam- 



614 FERTILITY OF SOIL. Chap. XXIX. 

besi and Shire may be found during several months of the 
year, they will never be found lower than what we have 
mentioned. 

The fertility of the soil has been amply proved by its pro- 
ductions. Indigo, for instance, has been found growing wild 
over large tracts of country, and often attains the height of a 
man. It has probably been introduced from India, but a spe- 
cies was found at Lake Nyassa equally tall, though it differs 
from that on the Zambesi in having straight instead of curved 
pods. In order to remove all doubt as to the value of the 
latter sort, Dr. Kirk extracted some of the coloring matter 
from the indigo growing wild at Shupanga, and it exhibited 
the peculiar coppery streak when a scratch was made on it 
which is characteristic of the best article of commerce. 

The cotton collected from a great many districts of the 
country was found to be of very superior quality. Large 
spaces are so much impregnated with salt that an efflorescence 
of it appears all over the surface. In these spaces superior 
cotton flourishes with very little care. We saw some men 
who had been employed to take canoes down to the coast, 
sitting on the bank, on soil like this, cleaning and spinning 
their cotton. When we returned twelve months afterward, 
the seeds thrown away had germinated, flourished, and yield- 
ed cotton wool, which, when sent to Manchester, was pro- 
nounced to be twopence per pound better in quality than 
common New Orleans ; and not only is the cotton produced 
of good quality, but it is persistent in the soil to an extent 
quite unknown in America. We have observed cotton-bush- 
es yielding vigorously in parts where they had not only to 
struggle for existence against grass towering over their heads, 
but had for at least ten years to bear up against the fires 
which annually burnt down them and the grass together. 



Chap. XXIX. SOIL WELL ADAPTED TO COTTON. 015 

During Dr. Livingstone's journey from Loanda on the 
West Coast to Quillimane on the East Coast, no particular 
attention was paid to the plant, because the question of cot- 
ton supply was then but little mooted. The statements made 
subsequently in England embodied only the results of casual 
observation, but they led to an official inquiry by the Portu- 
guese government, and Dr. Welweitch, a botanist well quali- 
fied from his general attainments and long residence in An- 
gola, conducted the investigation. Dr. Livingstone's impres- 
sions as to the fitness of Angola for the growth of cotton 
were abundantly borne out by this gentleman's report. 

'Our late investigations prove that the former statements 
as to the suitability of the climate and soil north of the 15° 
or 16° of south latitude were very much within the truth. 
In fact, the region indicated is pre-eminently a cotton-field, 
crops never running any danger of being cut off by frost. 
The natives have paid a good deal of attention to the cultiva- 
tion of the plant, and find that the best requires renewal only 
once in three years. 

No cotton-plants were observed in the middle of the coun- 
try during Dr. Livingstone's journey across Africa, but our 
attention had since been so carefully directed to the subject 
that a single cotton-bush never escaped observation. We 
found that not only was the plant well known to the people 
of the interior, but that a variety not met with on either 
coast was under cultivation inland. Thus, for instance, the 
Bazizulu, living near the Kafue, had a variety yielding cotton 
of very fine quality and long staple, which can only be de- 
scribed as of the Pernambuco kind ; and at Sesheke the stem 
of a tree of this species had attained a diameter of eight inch- 
es, and was so tall that Dr. Kirk had to climb up it for spec- 
imens as one would up an apple-tree. 



616 TOBACCO— CASTOR-OIL PLANT. Chap. XXIX. 

Two other varieties were found cultivated over large tracts 
of country. The indigenous kind had nearly been super- 
seded by a very superior sort called "foreign cotton." This 
had been introduced by the natives themselves ; and the dis- 
trict included in the Shire Valley and shores adjacent to 
Lake ISTyassa, in which it abounds, is about 400 miles in 
length, and may confidently be stated as one of the finest 
cotton-fields in the world. Cotton already cultivated there 
is superior to common American, and nearly equal to Egyp- 
tian. The favorable soil and climate render it probable that 
with skill in cultivation this country might be made to excel 
many others. 

In farther illustration of the fertility of the soil, we found 
that those plants which require much care in the cultivation 
in other countries grow wild here as well as cotton. Tobac- 
co, though a delicate plant, was frequently found gro wing- 
self-sown. The Ricinus communis, or castor-oil plant, was 
met with every where under similar circumstances. In some 
parts indigo is known by the name of "occupier of deserted 
gardens," from its habit of springing up wherever it has a 
chance. Sugar-cane is not a self-planter, but it blossoms, 
and, when cultivated in rich loam, grows, without manure, as 
large as that which can only be reared by the help of guano 
in the Mauritius and Bourbon ; and, from crystals at once ap- 
pearing on the cut surfaces, seems to contain much sugar. 

In addition to these evidences of the richness of the soil, 
we have the face of the country in the lowlands covered with 
gigantic grasses; they tower over men's heads, and render 
hunting quite impossible. The inhabitants of Natal and of 
the Cape Colony will understand us perfectly when we say 
that the low belt adjacent to the East Coast, from one to 
three hundred miles broad, is " zour velt" and well suited for 



Chap. XXIX. FAT CATTLE— DROUGHTS. 617 

cattle. In fact, the only fault that can be found with the 
soil is its over-luxuriance ; and though Speke and Grant men- 
tion a very fertile zone near the equator, we can not conceive 
that it exhibits greater fecundity than the districts between 
10° and 15° south, otherwise it would be perfectly impassa- 
ble. On the islands in the Shire crops are raised continuous- 
ly, without any regard to the season, and, by irrigation, wheat 
during the four colder months. Europeans can always se- 
cure one crop of European corn and two or three of maize 
annually. 

On the highlands the natural grasses are less luxuriant, 
but the average crop is as heavy as could be obtained from 
rich meadow-land in England. This self-sown pasturage, 
which extends over hundreds of miles of grassy valley and 
open woodland, is the best in Africa. This was shown by 
the cattle, which were left almost in a wild state, becoming 
so fat and lazy that bulls allowed the boys to play with them 
and to jump on their backs. We have seen cows feeding on 
grass alone become as heavy as prize beasts. 

In general, no tsetse is found on the highlands to injure cat- 
tle, nor musquitoes to annoy man. 

It would not be fair, while giving the results of our inqui- 
ries, to keep out of view one serious drawback, which we be- 
lieve is characteristic of evCry part of Central Africa. Peri- 
odical droughts must be expected. If a rainy zone exists un- 
der the equator, that is the only exception known. These 
droughts are always partial, but may prevail over areas of 
from one to three hundred miles in extent. Our inquiries 
led us to believe that from 10° to 15° south they may be 
looked for once every ten or fifteen years, and from 15° to 
20° south once in every five years. "What the cause of them 
may be we can not tell ; but lack of vegetation can not be as- 



618 HARD WOODS COMMON. Chap. XXIX. 

signed as any reason either for their occurrence, or greater 
frequency now than at any former period. The hills are cov- 
ered with trees and grass to their summits. The valleys are 
often encumbered with profuse and rank vegetation ; but 
suddenly, and without any warning, the years of plenty are 
succeeded by one in which there is neither earing nor har- 
vest. A shower has fallen on one spot a mile square ; there 
the grass has sprung up, but has died off again. The rest of 
the country is parched and burnt ; the grass of the preceding 
year, which may have escaped the annual fires, is discolored, 
and crumbles into powder in the hand ; and the leaves of the 
trees, though alive, look withered. One who had seen the 
landscape in all its glorious freshness and verdure after rains, 
could scarcely believe that the brown and dusty world before 
him was ever green. 

Though the country is well supplied with trees, really 
large timber is to be obtained only in limited districts. The 
Gunda is valuable for its durability and size, and is hollowed 
out into canoes capable of carrying two or three tons each. 
The Mosokoso and Mukundu-kundu also are good timber 
trees. The Lignum-vitas attains a larger size here than any 
where else. We have measured specimens four feet in diam- 
eter ; but, though the wood is in appearance exactly like the 
lignum-vitaB of other countries, it is said to be inferior in 
toughness. Africa is more remarkable for the abundance of 
its hard woods than for its timber. African ebony, or black 
wood, though not the same botanically as the ebony of com- 
merce, attains a large size, and is of a deeper black. It 
abounds on the Rovuma, within eight miles of the sea, and 
so do other valuable woods, as, for instance, the Fustic, which 
yields a permanent yellow dye. The Molompi is widely dis- 
tributed, and seems to be identical with the Pterocarpus erina- 



Chap. XXIX. PRODUCTIONS OF THE COUNTRY. 619 

ceus, which produces the African kino on the West Coast ; 
for, when wounded, it exudes large quantities of gum resem- 
bling this drug. The wood is excellent for paddles and oars, 
from its toughness and lightness. In addition to these, we 
have the Mopane, or iron- wood, and the Mangroves, which 
are much esteemed for rafters. 

A species of sarsaparilla, probably Smilax Krausiana, is 
abundant on the highlands ; Calumba-root on the plains ; 
the Buaze, with a fibre stronger and finer than flax, and the 
fibrous Sansiviera, or ife, are both common. The Buaze, the 
Motsikiri, the Boma — one of the Sterculias, and a species of 
mahogany — all yield oil, or a kind of oleaginous matter ; the 
oil. of the Buaze has fine drying properties. 

In addition to these wild products we have the Sesamum 
widely and extensively cultivated ; from its seeds, which are 
now an article of export, and ground-nuts, most of the salad 
oil used in England is expressed. A large species of cucum- 
ber, called Makaka, is much cultivated by the natives both 
as an article of food and for the sake of its fine oil. 

We confess that we do not attempt to describe the produc- 
tions of the country with that fullness they deserve, nor with 
that hopeful heartiness we once felt. Nor do we cite the dis- 
coveries of Lakes Shirwa and ISTyassa, or the patient exam- 
ination of the Zambesi to a point beyond the Yictoria Falls, 
or other important geographical feats, with any degree of 
pride. These were all incidental to our main design. What 
we have seen of the slave-trade has thrown a gloom over all. 
Our notes tell of a country entirely different from most pre- 
conceived notions of Africa ; and though, in the cozy room 
which by grace we occupy in Newstead Abbey, the eye now 
falls on the lawn all covered with snow, it is no difficult task 
to recall the bright warm glow reflected from East African 



620 VAEIETIES OF SLAVING. Chap. XXIX. 

ghauts. We can easily fancy the slopes furrowed by valleys 
lined with trees, with here and there a rocky bluff jutting out ; 
or we can bring back to our memory the rich upland pla- 
teaux, like open prairies covered with grass, or dotted over 
with clumps of foliage, and watered by numerous streams, all 
bathed in a flood of sunlight ; but that sad slave-trade hangs 
like a pall over the whole. The picturesque undulations, the 
deep gorges and ravines leading down from the edges of the 
table -lands to lower levels where the Shire meanders in 
green meadows like a silver thread, or the broad lake, backed 
with its mountain masses, can all be pictured to "the mind's 
eye, but their natural beauties are now inseparably associa- 
ted with human sorrow and woe. 

"We have been careful to mention in the text the different 
ways in which the slave-trade is carried on, because we be- 
lieve that, though this odious traffic baffled many of our ef- 
forts to ameliorate the condition of the' natives, our expedi- 
tion is the first that ever saw slavery at its fountain-head and 
in all its phases. The assertion has been risked, because no 
one was in a condition to deny it, that the slave-trade was, 
like any other branch of commerce, subject to the law of sup- 
ply and demand, and that therefore it ought to be free. From 
what we have seen, it involves so much of murder in it as an 
essential element, that it can scarcely be allowed to remain in 
the catalogue of commerce any more than garroting, thuggee, 
or piracy. 

We have the system nearest to that of justice, indeed the 
only one that approaches it, when the criminal is sold for his 
crimes. Then, on the plea of witchcraft, the child taken from 
the poorer classes of parents as a fine, or to pay a debt, and 
sold to a traveling native slave-trader. Then children kid- 
napped by a single robber, or by a gang going from their 



Chap. XXIX. EUROPEAN SLAVE AGENCY. 621 

own village to neighboring hamlets to steal the children who 
are out drawing water or gathering wood. We have seen 
places where every house was a stockade, and yet the people 
were not safe. Next comes the system of retaliation of one 
hamlet against another to make reprisals, and the same thing 
on a larger scale between tribes ; the portion of the tribe 
which flees becomes vagrant, and eventually, armed with 
muskets, the produce of previous slaving, attacks peaceful 
tribes, and depopulates the country for the supply of the 
ocean slave-trade. Again, we have the slave-traders from 
the Coast, who may be either Arabs or half-caste Portuguese. 
For them slaves are collected, by the natives who possess 
most of a commercial turn, along the most frequented routes. 
In this branch the Ajawa and Babisa are conspicuous. The 
lowering effects of this trade in man are quite apparent even 
in the natives. The Ajawa and Babisa, though superior in 
intellect to many others, are so thoroughly degraded morally 
that they have been known to sell, for a tusk that took their 
fancy, their own daughters or newly -married wives. The 
members of the same tribes who are settled, and have never 
engaged in slaving, would be shocked at the bare mention of 
such enormities. 

And, lastly, we have still another and more ample source 
of supply for the ocean slave-trade, and we regret to say the 
means for its success are drawn directly from Europeans. 
Trading-parties are sent out from Portuguese and Arab coast 
towns with large quantities of muskets, ammunition, cloth, 
and beads. The two last articles are used for paying their 
way during the earlier part of the journey from the Coast, 
and for the purchase of ivory. From a great number of cases 
we have examined, these slaving-parties seem to preserve the 
mercantile character for a large portion of the trip. They 



622 ENORMOUS WASTE OF LIFE. Chap. XXIX. 

usually settle down with some chieftain and cultivate the 
soil ; but we know of no instance in which they have not, at 
one part of their journey, joined one tribe in attacking anoth- 
er for the sake of the captives they could take. This is so 
frequent an occurrence, that the system causes a frightful loss 
of life. The bow can not stand for a moment against the 
musket. Flight, starvation, and death ensue ; and we must 
again record our conviction that the mortality after these 
slave wars, in addition to the losses on the journey to the 
Coast and during the middle passage, makes it certain that 
not more than one in five ever reach the " kind masters" in 
Cuba and elsewhere, whom, according to slave-owners' inter- 
pretation of Scripture, Providence intended for them. 

The Portuguese at Tette followed the last of these systems. 
The waste of life we witnessed is beyond description. As 
members of the medical profession, our eyes were familiar 
with scenes truly sad enough, but this misery by the slave- 
trade fairly outstrips all we ever saw. Part of the captives 
realized were sent up the Zambesi, above Tette, to -be sold for 
ivory — a woman fetched two arrobas, or sixty pounds' weight. 
A large portion of the males were sent to Bourbon. "We 
were witnesses of both these modes of disposing of the cap- 
tives, as well as of the results following their capture. We 
again allude to this nauseating subject, because it is of im- 
portance to observe that all this waste of life happened under 
the direction of an enlightened and far-reaching intelligence. 
His majesty, Napoleon III., meant to supply the lack of labor 
in Bourbon by engaging free emigrants from Africa. A gov- 
ernment officer was appointed over every vessel, and he was 
to see that the engagements with the natives were just and 
fair ; that no overcrowding took place, and that proper food 
was supplied in sufficient quantity. With all the emperor's 



Chap. XXIX. THE "FRENCH ENGAGE SYSTEM". 623 

care, his policy actually produced the effects which we wit- 
nessed. It became the accursed slave-trade in an aggravated 
form, and with a powerful, energetic government to back it. 
All honor to the emperor for freeing his people from the ca- 
lamity of being engaged in slaving, and to our government 
for patiently pointing out the evils of which he was uncon- 
sciously guilty, and, at considerable sacrifice, enabling a sup- 
ply of labor to be exported from India. That there may be 
no mistake in supposing that we have been misled in ascrib- 
ing the sad effects we have faintly described to the enlighten- 
ed and careful." French engage system," we will mention one 
of the proofs. When we were at Johanna, a " free emigrant," 
who had been bought at Kilwa for twenty -two dollars, swam 
on board the Pioneer from a vessel long known at the Cape 
as the Mazurka, but then belonging to a French owner, and 
under the supervision of the French government officer. This 
emigrant had slipped overboard from the Mazurka at early 
dawn, when she was getting under way ; and we found that 
he was a Manganja, and had actually come from Banda. We 
saw also the Manganja "free emigrants" going down in ca- 
noe-loads chained. The Commandant of Tette remarked, with 
a grin, "You can't interfere with us now that we have the 
French flag to support us." We thought that there were 
thousands in France who would have kicked him for his com- 
pliment to the tri-color. 

The result of our observation of the actual working of the 
slave-trade at its source is, that it must prove an insurmount- 
able barrier to all moral and commercial progress. The dif- 
ferent English statesmen who have labored for its suppres- 
sion have shown profound wisdom and great political fore- 
sight. Instead of viewing our leading politicians as eager 
only for place and power, the efforts of Liberals and Con- 



624 SLAVERY IN AMERICA. Chap. XXIX. 

servatives in this one direction would tend to prove them, in 
the widest sense, promoters of peace and good-will among 
men. The truth of this will become more evident if we re- 
flect on the ultimate effects of the traffic. It perpetuates bar- 
barism in the country from which the slaves are drawn, and 
it has a most injurious influence on the land to which they 
are taken. The introduction of African laborers to compete 
with Europeans renders labor unpopular among the latter, 
and throws an obstacle in the way of the progress of society, 
because nothing tends more to elevate a people than that the 
best minds should be bent to, and delight in, labor dignified 
by being undertaken for the general improvement. 

We would speak tenderly of the terrible revolution now 
going on in America, which is so destructive to life and prop- 
erty ; for we deeply deplore the sufferings of our brethren — 
the sad effects of slavery. The war is entirely due to the 
presence in one section of that great country of a slave popu- 
lation, whose number does not form more than one sixth part 
of the entire American community. The introduction of an 
inferior race from a barbarous country was a great mistake. 
To degrade and deny that race the rights of manhood, a still 
greater blunder ; for the debasement was sure to react on the 
master and on his children. In fact, the degradation of the 
slave must not only demoralize the master, but probably the 
master is the greater loser of the two. Then the presence of 
millions of a degraded race makes amalgamation or transport- 
ation impossible ; there they must remain ; if they can not 
be elevated, they must prove a down-drag, a moral millstone 
on the neck, an evil beyond remedy ; a severe retribution on 
the descendants of those who were goaded on by our own 
forefathers in the slave-trade. But we do not believe in any 
incapacity of the African in either mind or heart, and our 



Chap. XXIX. THE AFRICAN PHYSICALLY. 625 

American brethren deserve our warmest sympathy in the 
gigantic task before them. From the evils connected with 
the slave-trade our statesmen have nobly striven to rescue 
and defend us, and no reasonable expense, that preserves us 
from contamination, should be esteemed a sacrifice: if we es- 
cape, it is not because, as a nation, we are innocent. 

In reference to the status of the Africans among the na- 
tions of the earth, we have seen nothing to justify the notion 
that they are of a different "breed" or "species" from the 
most civilized. The African is a man with every attribute 
of human kind. Centuries of barbarism have had the same 
deteriorating effects on Africans as Pritchard describes them 
to have had on certain of the Irish who were driven, some 
generations back, to $he hills in Ulster and Connaught ; and 
these depressing influences have had such moral and physical 
effects on some tribes, that ages probably will be required 
to undo what ages hav6 done. This degradation, however, 
would hardly be given as a reason for holding any race in 
bondage, unless the advocate had sunk morally to the same 
low state. Apart from the frightful loss of life in the process 
by which, it is pretended, the negroes are better provided for 
than in a state of liberty in their own country, it is this very 
system that perpetuates, if not causes, the unhappy condition 
with which the comparative comfort of some of them in slav- 
ery is contrasted. 

Ethnologists reckon the African as by no means the lowest 
of the human family. He is nearly as strong physically as 
the European, and, as a race, is wonderfully persistent among 
the nations of the earth. Neither the diseases nor the ardent 
spirits which proved so fatal to North American Indians, 
South Sea Islanders, and Australians, seem capable of anni- 
hilating the negroes. Even when subjected to that system so 



626 APTITUDE FOR SERVICE. Chap. XXIX. 

destructive to human life, by which they are torn from their 
native soil, they spring up irrepressibly, and darken half the 
new continent. They are gifted by nature with physical 
strength capable of withstanding the sorest privations, and a 
lightheartedness which, as a sort of compensation, enables 
them to make the best of the worst situations. It is like 
that power which the human frame possesses of withstanding 
heat, and to an extent which we should never have known, 
had not an adventurous surgeon gone into an oven and burnt 
his fingers with his own watch. The Africans have wonder- 
fully borne up under unnatural conditions that would have 
proved fatal to most races. 

It is remarkable that the power of resistance under calam- 
ity, or, as some would say, adaptation fpr a life of servitude, 
is peculiar only to certain tribes on the continent of Africa. 
Climate can not be made to account for the fact that many 
would pine in a state of slavery, of voluntarily perish. No 
Krooman can be converted into a slave, and yet he is an in- 
habitant of the low, unhealthy West Coast ; nor can any of 
the Zulu or Kaffir tribes be reduced to bondage, though 
all these live on comparatively elevated regions. We have 
heard it stated by men familiar with some of the Kaffirs, 
that a blow, given even in play by a European, must be re- 
turned. A love of liberty is observable in all who have the 
Zulu blood, as the Makololo, the Watuta, and probably the 
Masai. But blood does not explain the fact. A beautiful 
Barotse woman at Naliele, on refusing to marry a man whom 
she did not like, was in a pet given by the head man to some 
Mambari slave-traders from Benguela. Seeing her fate, she 
seized one of their spears, and, stabbing herself, fell down 
dead. 

The African form of government is patriarchal, and, ac- 



Chap. XXIX. PROGRESS IN THE ARTS STAGNANT. 627 

cording to the temperament of the chief, despotic, or guided 
by the counsel of the elders of the tribe. Eeverence for roy- 
alty sometimes leads the mass of the people to submit to 
great cruelty, and even murder, at the hands of a despot or 
madman ; but, on the whole, the rule is mild, and the same 
remark applies in a degree to their religion. The races of 
this Continent seem to have advanced to a certain point and 
no farther; their progress in the arts of working iron and 
copper, in pottery, basket-making, spinning, weaving, making 
nets, fish-hooks, spears, axes, knives, needles, and other things, 
whether originally invented by this people or communicated 
by another instructor, appears to have remained in the same 
rude state for a great number of centuries. This apparent 
stagnation of mind in certain nations we can not understand ; 
but, since we have in the latter ages of the world made what 
we consider great progress in the arts, we have unconsciously 
got into the way of speaking of some other races in much the 
same tone as that used by the Celestials in the Flowery Land. 
These same Chinese anticipated us in several most important 
discoveries by as many centuries as we may have preceded 
others. In the knowledge of the properties of the magnet, 
the composition of gunpowder, the invention of printing, the 
manufacture of porcelain, of silk, and in the progress of liter- 
ature, they were before us. But then the power of making 
farther discoveries was arrested, and a stagnation of the intel- 
lect prevented their advancing in the path of improvement 
or invention. 

To the Asiatics we owe cotton, sugar, clepsydras, and sun- 
dials. From the East we have derived algebra, the game of 
chess, coffee, tea, alcohol, and steel. The servile imitation, 
which took the place of mental activity and invention, seems 
to have fallen on Chinese, Japanese, Asiatics, Arabians, and 



628 UNCONSCIOUS CO-OPERATION. Chap. XXIX. 

Africans alike. Does this paralysis of the inventive faculties 
indicate that each race is destined to perform its own part in 
the one vast plan of creative Providence, of which our finite 
minds can take in only so minute a portion that we shall 
never comprehend it as a whole till the end of all things ? 
In our smaller sphere we can see many instances of uncon- 
scious co-operation. Archbishop Whately points out the ex- 
ample of the city of London, " a province covered with 
houses," supplied with food with a certainty, completeness, 
and regularity to which probably the most diligent benevo- 
lence, under the guidance of the greatest human wisdom, 
could never have attained. All the agency in this case is 
made up of men who each thinks of nothing beyond his own 
immediate interest, and yet they all unconsciously co-operate 
in carrying on a system which no human wisdom could have 
conducted so well. If perfect adaptation of means to ends 
indicates wisdom and design, we have in this instance both 
in full play; for each man, acting by motives addressed to 
his own free will, advances as regularly and passively to an 
object, which the co-operators as a whole never contemplated, 
as if he were one of the wheels of a machine. The proofs of 
man in society being guided by wisdom not his own, and to 
beneficial results he never intended, are abundant wherever 
the human race is so far advanced as to live under a form 
of government however rude, and indicate a plan of Provi- 
dence which will at last be clear to all as one of consummate 
wisdom. 

The stagnation of mind in certain nations which have pre- 
ceded us in the line of discovery may also have been intend- 
ed, in order that the" greatest power derivable from science 
and art might be associated with the religion which proclaims 
peace and good-will to man. Had the power given 6y in- 



Chap. XXIX. CAPABILITY FOE, CHRISTIANITY. 629 

ventions to the nations of Christendom been awarded in the 
natural course of things to the men who were first in the 
race, we see no earthly reason why the Buddhists and Mo- 
hammedans should not now have lorded it over us poor isl- 
anders with steamers, and all the improvements in artillery, 
or that the Lancashire witches and Edinburg " bonny lasses" 
should not now have been exported regularly to the harems 
of the East * 

We have been so often asked whether the Africans were 
capable of embracing the Christian religion, that we venture 
to make the following observations, although our doing so 
may appear to be a work of supererogation to all who have 
witnessed the effects already produced in West and South 
Africa by teaching supplied entirely by private benevolence, 
or who have watched the missionary movements of various 
Christian churches during the last quarter of a century. The 
question seems to imply a belief on the part of those who put 
it that the reception of the Gospel involves a high develop- 
ment and exercise of the reasoning powers. Some men, in- 

* The peculiar convexity of face and enormous size of ears which mark the 
African species of elephant are so clearly defined in an Egyptian sarcophagus 
in the British Museum, of the 26th Dynasty, some 500 years before our era, as 
to render it probable that the sculptor saw the animal alive ; and it is more 
likely that it was a tame one than that the sculptor was a traveler, or that a 
wild elephant was driven down to Egypt. The elephants used by the Komans 
and Carthaginians were certainly African ; and in a treaty, pointed out by Mr. 
R. S. Poole, the Romans bound down the Carthaginians not to tame any more 
elephants. " Perfugas, fugitivosque, et captivos omnes redderent Romanis, et 
naves rostratas, prseter decern triremes, traderent : elephantasque, quos habe- 
rent domitos, neque domarent alios." — Livy, xxx., 37. This indicates the 
close of one branch of African industry. The Egyptian monuments show that 
other wild animals also were tamed ; but the stagnation of intellect common to 
the later Egyptians and other tribes on that and the Indian Continent seems 
to have taken place at very remote periods. In speaking of the African race, 
the reader will observe that we do not, as those do who know little of the great 
interior, take the negro inhabiting the minute fringe by the low West Coast as 
typical of the whole family. 



630 OUR DIVINE EELIGION SUITS ALL. Chap. XXIX. 

deed, are constitutionally prone to reason out every subject 
as far as their intellects can lead them ; but those who are 
led through life by pure reason constitute a very small minor- 
ity of any race. To quote from one of Sir James Stephen's 
excellent Historical Essays : " The apostles assume in all men 
the existence of a spiritual discernment, enabling the mind, 
when unclouded by appetite or passion, to recognize and dis- 
tinguish the Divine voice, whether uttered from within by 
the intimations of conscience, or speaking from without in 
the language of the inspired oracles ; they presuppose that 
vigor of reason may consist with feebleness of understanding, 
and that the power of discriminating between religious truth 
and error does not "chiefly depend on the culture or on the 
exercise of the merely argumentative faculty. The Gospel, 
the especial patrimony of the poor and the illiterate, has been 
the stay of millions who never framed a syllogism. Of the 
great multitudes who, before and since the birth of Grotius, 
have lived in the peace and died in the consolations of our 
faith, how incomparably few are they whose convictions have 
been derived from argumentative works like his !" 

"We prefer to use the words of this able writer rather than 
our own to express the belief that our divine religion suits 
the lowest as well as the highest of our race. But in dealing 
with the different classes of the human family the teaching 
must be adapted to the individual circumstances. The state- 
ly ceremonial, the ritual observances, the sedative sermon, 
and the austere look of those who think it right to indulge 
in a little spiritual pride, may suit some minds, but the de- 
graded of our race in every land must be treated in somewhat 
the same manner as is adopted in dealing with the outcasts 
of London. Whether we approach the downtrodden victims 
of the slave-trade in sultry Africa, or our poor brethren in 



Chap. XXIX. SUNDAY AT SIERRA LEONE. ^31 

the streets, who have neither warmth, shelter, nor home, we 
must employ the same agency to secure their confidence — 
the magic power of kindness : a charm which may be said to 
be one of the discoveries of modern days. This charm may 
not act at once, nor may its effects always be permanent ; the 
first feeling of the wretched, of whatever color, may be that 
of distrust, or a suspicion that kindness is a proof of weak- 
ness ; but the feelings which the severity of their lot has with- 
ered will in time spring up like the tender grass after rain. 
It was the fact of Bishop Mackenzie's grappling in the true 
missionary spirit with the gigantic evil of the country, and 
affording a home and shelter to the oppressed, that gave him 
so soon the confidence of the people. In every case the 
means of amelioration must be adapted to the special circum- 
stances of the people. Charity must adopt every effort that 
charity can devise to rouse the slothful, civilize the brutal, 
instruct the ignorant, and preach the Gospel of love and 
mercy to all. 

With respect to the results already obtained by the labors 
of missionaries, we have been led to the discovery of some 
very curious and unexpected facts. Having visited Sierra 
Leone and some other parts of the West Coast, as well as a 
great part of South Africa, we were very much gratified by 
the evidences of success which came under our own personal 
observation. The crowds of well-dressed, devout, and intel- 
ligent-looking worshipers, in both the West and South, form- 
ed a wonderful contrast to the same people still in their hea- 
then state. At Sierra Leone, Kuruman, and other places, the 
Sunday, for instance, seemed as well observed as it is any 
where in Scotland. The sight produced an indelible impres- 
sion on the mind that England had done an amount of good 
by her philanthropy that will be recognized and appreciated 



(332 CHRISTIANS AND MOHAMMEDANS. Chap. XXIX. 

by posterity. Had we not previously been intimately ac- 
quainted by long personal intercourse with the people at 
Kuruman, who have enjoyed nearly half a century of Mr. 
Moffat's missionary labors, and had we not known the state 
of mind of the stock from which all his converts had been 
drawn, we might have been misled, and have given a lower 
value to the appearances presented than they deserved. But 
we have had ample opportunities of forming an estimate of 
the amount of real Christianity among professing converts, 
and we are satisfied, from observation and inquiry, that the 
assertion of Captain Burton that Mohammedans alone make 
proselytes in Africa is not correct, and we believe that in 
making it he rather intended to shock the prejudices of those 
whom he thought weak-minded than to state a fact. The 
quotation of this statement in an English periodical led us to 
make a few inquiries, the results of which^we give with sat- 
isfaction, because wherever Christianity spreads it makes men 
better. 

By the government census of 1861 the population of Sierra 
Leone was 41,000 souls. Of the entire population 27,000 
were Christians. The Mohammedans numbered altogether 
1734 souls, which does not seem a very large proportion for 
the sect which " alone makes proselytes." In 1854 the 12,000 
Christians in the colony belonging to the Church of England 
took the entire cost of the schools, £800 per annum, upon 
themselves. We are not aware at what stage of the growth 
of the native churches on the West Coast the wish to support 
and spread the religion they had received became apparent ; 
but in 1861 the contributions to the Church Missionary So- 
ciety for this purpose among these African Christians had 
amounted to £10,000. These facts show pretty conclusively 
that they have an earnest desire to communicate the bless- 
ings they have received to their children and to others. 



# Chap. XXIX. FAILURE OF MOHAMMEDANISM. (333 

No attempt has been made to collect information from all 
the African Missions, but from the replies of unimpeachable 
witnesses it appears that the contributions from negroes in 
the West Indies, and in West and South Africa, for the sup- 
port and spread of the Christian Faith, amount to upward of 
£15,000 annually. We therefore repeat, that while, in ex- 
ceptional cases, Mohammedans have propagated their religion, 
and at the same time gratified their lust of plunder or selfish- 
ness, the rule is, that native Christians make sacrifices of their 
property to spread Christianity, though always instructed that 
they never thereby purchase their own salvation. 

Having failed to find the grounds on which the spread of 
Mohammedanism is asserted as a fact, we can not help asso- 
ciating the assertion with others made against the English an- 
ti-slave-trade policy, which, on examination on the spot, we 
found to be groundless. These latter seem to have emanated 
from traders on the Coast, who in their cups would have no 
objection to see the slave-trade revived. With all due defer- 
ence to our countrymen abroad, and in spite of the conviction 
that they have a higher sense of justice than the members of 
some other nations, we must confess that the low English 
trader is so much of a bully that he needs looking after ; and, 
putting out of the question the national duty of the strong to 
protect the weak, we think that the amount of trade* already 

* The Annual Trade Returns presented to Parliament show that the de- 
clared value of British and Irish produce and manufactures exported to the 
West Coast of Africa, arranged in periods of five years each, has been as fol- 
lows • 

EXPORTS FROM GREAT BRITAIN. 

18-16-50 £2,773,408, or a yearly average of £554,681 

1851-55 4,314,752, " " 862,950 

1856-60 5,582,941, " << 1,116,588 

1861-63 4,216,045, " " 1,405,348 

IMPORTS. 

The same Trade Returns show that the imports of African produce from the 



034: KEPORT OF COLONEL ORD. Chap. XXIX. 

developed by Lord Palmerston's policy on the West Coast de- 
mands the continuance of that policy in unabated strictness. 

The Eeport of Colonel Ord — the commissioner appointed 
to inquire into the condition of the British settlements on the 
"West Coast of Africa — which was ordered to be printed by 
the House of Commons on the 29th of March, 1865, says : 
" As regards the slave-trade, it is a well-established fact that 
it has disappeared from the neighborhood of every spot on 
the West Coast which has been made a British settlement, 
the distance to which it has been removed depending in a 
great measure on the extent to which the authorities of the 
settlement have been able to make their influence felt. Nor 
need this statement be limited to British territory, the Dutch 
and Danish possessions on the Gold Coast, and the Eepublic 
of Liberia, having been equally the means of banishing the 
traffic from their vicinity" (p. 28). 

Although it is a little apart from the point to which our 
observations tend, and we would not willingly be thought in- 
different to the loss of even a single human life, it is desira- 
ble that it should be more widely known than it is, that the 
employment of our squadron does not now involve the mor- 
tality that it once did. The men are not so much employed 

"West Coast into Great Britain have been as follows. The " official value" is 
given before 1856, after that date the "computed real value" is given: 
Official value 1851-55 £4,154,725; average £830,945 

Computed real value j 1856 " 60 9 ' 876 ' 251 ? " M75.250 

r (.1861-63 5,284,611; " 1,761,537 

The value of African produce has decreased during the last three years in 
consequence of the discovery of the petroleum or rock-oil in America. In 4 
1864^ between 4000 and 5000 bales of cotton were shipped to England. 

It is to be borne in mind that under the system which existed when Sierra 
Leone, the Gambia, and Gold Coast settlements were maintained for the pro- 
motion of the slave-trade, the lawful commerce was only £20,000 annually, 
and that now the amount of tonnage employed in carrying legal merchandise 
is greater than was ever engaged in carrying slaves. 



Chap XXIX. MORTALITY ON THE WEST COAST. 



635 



in the rivers as formerly j condensed water has been brought 
into common use, and the treatment of fever is better under- 
stood. In our own experience, instead of bleeding, as was the 
practice, we found an aperient combined with quinine so effi- 
cacious, that an attack of fever was generally not much worse 
than a common cold, and no strength was lost by the patient. 
Somewhat similar treatment has reduced the rate of mortali- 
ty in H. M. ships on the Coast of Africa lower than on the 
West Indies and North American station * 

We certainly never met with any benevolent person who 
lavished all his charity abroad, and refused to extend a kind 
and helping hand to the children of sin and sorrow at home. 
Indeed, we consider his existence to be a mere figment in the 
brain of croakers, whose own benevolence shines nowhere. 
So we anticipate no objection from those who are most alive 
to the pressing wants of the home population to our quoting 
with pride the Missionary Societies which are at work on the 



* The following table shows the ratio per 1000 of mean force, at the differ- 
ent stations, of men daily sick from all diseases and injuries, of invalidings, 
and of deaths : 



Stations. 


Ratio 

per 1000 of men 

sick daily. 


Ratio 
per 1000 of 
invalidings. 


Ratio 

per 1000 of 

deaths. 


Home 


48-1 
61-8 
60-4 
43-4 
58-9 
62-0 
76-7 
86-7 
40-0 
77-4 


31-2 

45-4 
36-2 
27-7 
36-2 
38-0 
31-3 
61-6 
28-4 
26-5 


9-6 
10-4 
42-1 
16-1 

7-9 
34-1 
18-1 
26-1 
13-7 
10-4 




North America and West Indies 
Brazils 


West Coast of Africa 


Cape of Good Hope 


East Indies and China 


Australia 







" No detailed information has been obtained respecting the loss by death of 
the civil servants of the government on the West Coast ; but it may be stated 
that the loss of life from climate among this class is by no means large. The 
facility with which officers of all the services who suffer to any dangerous ex- 
tent from disease are permitted to return home on sick leave must operate to 
diminish considerably the number of fatal cases." — Report of Colonel Ord, p. 30. 



636 OUR AMERICAN MISSIONARY BRETHREN. Chap. XXIX. 

West Coast of Africa. The societies are sixteen in number. 
Of these, six are British, seven American, two German, and 
one West Indian. These societies maintain 104 European 
or American missionaries, have 110 stations, 13,000 scholars 
in 236 schools, and 19,000 registered communicants, a num- 
ber which probably represents a Christian population of 
60,000. 

It is particularly pleasing to see the zeal of our American 
brethren ; they show the natural influences and effects of our 
Holy Eeligion. With the genuine and true-hearted it is nev- 
er a question of distance, but of need. The Americans make 
capital missionaries, and it is only a bare act of justice to say 
that their labors and success on the West Coast are above all 
praise. And not on that shore alone does their benevolence 
shine. In India, China, South Seas, Syria, South Africa, and 
their own Far West, they have proved themselves worthy 
children of the Old Country — the asylum for the oppressed 
of every nation — the source of light for all lands, 

Now that we have given but a faint outline of what has 
been done on the West Coast, we ask with what face can the 
Portuguese shut some 900 miles of the East Coast from these 
civilizing and humanizing influences. Looking at the lawful 
trade which has been developed in one section of Africa, is 
it to be endured by the rest of the world that most of a con- 
tinent so rich and fertile should be doomed to worse than 
sterility till the Spaniards and Portuguese learn to abandon 
t'heir murderous traffic in man ? When these effete nations 
speak of their famous ancestors, they tacitly admit that the 
same sort of mental stagnation has fallen on themselves as on 
the Africans and others ; the United States would confer a 
blessing on Spain, and tear away much of the veil that blinds 
her, by annexing Cuba ; and England would perform a no- 



Chap. XXIX. SOLUTION OF OUR CONVICT QUESTION. 637 

ble service to Portugal by ignoring those pretenses to domin- 
ion on the East Coast by which, for the sake of mere swagger 
in Europe, she secures for herself the worst name in 'Chris- 
tendom. As we have mentioned, the more enlightened Lis- 
bon statesmen would fain effect by an English mercantile 
company what has been accomplished elsewhere by English 
philanthropy, protected by English cruisers. Here, on the 
East Coast, not a single native has been taught to read, not 
one branch of trade has been developed ; and wherever Por- 
tuguese power, or rather intrigue, extends, we have that traf- 
fic in full force which may be said to reverse every law of 
Christ, and to defy the vengeance of Heaven. 

All the efforts of England for its permanent suppression 
are nullified by a few convicts and needy Portuguese gov- 
ernors, who. in no case have authority to the extent of their 
unaided vision from their forts. If East Africa is still to be 
used only for convicts, why should not the English send 
theirs thither too? It does not belong to the Portuguese 
any more than China belongs to them because they possess 
Macao. Bad as our convicts are, they would be an improve- 
ment on those already sent. Neither officers nor men would 
deal in slaves. The climate certainly mollifies and subdues 
the passions. This we observed at Loando, where every 
night the whole of the arms of the city are in the hands of 
men who have once been convicts. The subject deserves 
consideration in the present difficulty of disposing of our con- 
vict population. 

In the able Eeport of Colonel Ord, it is stated that, while 
the presence of the squadron has had some share in sup- 
pressing the slave-trade, the result is mainly due to the ex- 
istence of the settlements. This is supported by the fact 
that, even in those least visited by men-of-war, it has been 



638 EXPEDITIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. Chap. XXIX. 

as effectually Suppressed as in those which have been their 
most constant resort. We have continually had the convic- 
tion in our minds that an expedition or settlement inland 
would produce greater results than men-of-war on the ocean, 
and be upheld with half the expense of one of her majesty's 
cruisers. 



THE END. 



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vYork. Harper ^Brothers 



BOOKS OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE 

PUBLISHED BY 

HARPER & BROTHERS, New Yoek. 



Habpeb & Beothees will send any of the following Works by mail, postage, free, to any part 
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Harper's Catalogue of Travel-Books is one of the literary curiosities of 
the day, exhibiting at a glance the contributions of modern travel to geographical 
and other knowledge. Commencing with South Africa, and marking on a map the 
tracks of these travelers, the reader will be astonished to see how thoroughly they 
cover the length and breadth of Africa. Livingstone, Ellis, Burton, Du Chaillu, 
Reade, Andersson, Speke, Davis, Wilson, and others, have within a few years ex- 
plored Africa pretty thoroughly ; Egypt and the Holy Land have been repeatedly 
described in late times ; Layard had given us the revelations of the Euphrates and 
the Tigris valleys ; Atkinson had written his admirable accounts of Siberia, illus- 
trated by his own most brilliant pencil; Hue and others described China ; and 
now a hitherto almost unknown portion of the very heart of Asia is opened to us by 
the delightful book of Vdmbery. — N. Y. Journal op Commerce. 



Livingstone's Zambesi. Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and 

its Tributaries; and of the Discovery of Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1853-1864. By David 
and Chaeles Livingstone. With Map and Illustrations. 8vo, Cloth, $5 00. 

Dr. Livingstone's South Africa. Missionary Travels and Researches in 

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Social Life of the Chinese : With some Account of their Religious, 

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Vambery's Central Asia. Travels in Central Asia. Being the Account 

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Reade's Savage Africa. Western Africa: Being the Narrative of a 

Tour in Equatorial, Southwestern, and Northwestern Africa ; with Notes on the Habits of 
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Speke's Africa. Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. By 

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Du Chaillu's Africa. Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa : 

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Squier's Central America, The States of Central America: Their Ge- 
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Squier's Waikna. Waikna; or, Adventures on the Mosquito Shore. By 
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Burton's City of the Saints. The City of the Saints ; and Across the 

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Arizona and Sonora. The Geography, History, and Resources of the Sil- 
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" From Dan to Beersheba ;" or, The Land of Promise as it now Appears. 
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Hunting in South Africa. African Hunting from Natal to the Zambesi, 
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Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838-1839. By 

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Three Years in Japan. The Capital of the Tycoon : A Narrative of a 
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Davis's Cartilage. Carthage and Her Remains: Being an Account of the 

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Life and Adventure in the South Pacific. By Jones. With Illustra- 
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Lord Elgin's Mission to China, &c. Narrative of Lord Elgin's Mission 

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Ellis's Madagascar. Three Visits to Madagascar during the Years 1853— 

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Fankwei ; or, The San Jacinto in the Seas of India, China, and Japan. 
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Page's La Plata. La Plata : The Argentine Confederation and Paraguay. 

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North and Central Africa. Travels and Discoveries in North and Cen- 
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"Western Africa ; Its History, Condition, and Prospects. By Rev. J. 
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Southwestern Africa. Lake Ngami; or, Explorations and Discoveries 

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A Hunter's Life in the Interior of Africa. Five Years of a Hunter's 

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With Illustrations. 2 vols., 12mo,'Cloth, $3 00. 

Boat Life in Egypt. By William C. Prime, Author of " The Old House 

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Tent Life in the Holy Land. By William C. Prime, Author of " The 
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Atkinson's Siberia. Oriental and Western Siberia : A Narrative of Seven 
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European Acquaintance : Being Sketches of People in Europe. By J. 
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Washington Territory and the Northwest Coast. Three Years' 

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Random Sketches and Notes of European Travel in 1856. Bv Bev Joh\ 

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Explorations and Adventures in Honduras, comprising Sketches of 

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A Journey through the Chinese Empire. By M. Hue, Author of 

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Ida PfeifTer's Journey Round the "World. A Lady's Second Journey 

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Politics, and Religion. By Heney M. Baied, M.A. Illustrated by about GO Engravings. 
12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 



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